report: Turkey attacks Kurdish bases: 120 die

[Bilge_Rat]

Turkey's military said Friday it killed as many as 120 Kurdish rebels in an air raid on rebel hideouts in northern Iraq last month and a daylong incursion by elite commandos into Iraq this week.

Hundreds of elite commandos crossed into Iraq for a daylong operation to hunt down a group of rebels who were escaping after an attack near the border town of Uludere. Kir said the commandos, who returned to their bases on the same day, killed five rebels but later intelligence reports suggested the rebel casualties, also in a co-ordinated air strike, were about 20.

according to other news report, it was more of a slaughter than a military operation, since there were apparently no casualties on the turkish side.

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/0...sh-rebels.html

anyone have any news on this?

strange that it is getting so little coverage in the news media.

[SteamWake]

Thats some scary stuff right there. I'll see what I can dig up.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100621/...u_turkey_kurds

http://www1.voanews.com/english/news...-96716079.html

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/06...new-offensive/

Strangley enough CNN had nothing but Vandersloot or whatever his name is was all over.

Well Turkey is a Nato country, Nato countries have a tendency to do a lot of indiscriminate killing. Just look at the wars in Iraq & Afghanistan + Israel's killing of Palestinians.

[MH]

Nice try....

[Weiss Pinguin]

Originally Posted by OneToughHerring

Well Turkey is a Nato country, Nato countries have a tendency to do a lot of indiscriminate killing. Just look at the wars in Iraq & Afghanistan + Israel's killing of Palestinians.

Already breaking out the fishing nets?

[Bilge_Rat]

Al Jazeera reports 130 killed, although the news is buried in a paragraph at the end of an article denouncing the "Kurd rebels":

On Friday, the Turkish military announced that at least 130 members of the PKK had been killed inside Turkey and in air raids on its hideouts in Iraq since violence flared in March.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/eu...424526682.html

of course, that is not surprising, Al Jazeera is well known for minimising reports about human rights abuse by any muslim country.

Originally Posted by Bilge_Rat

Al Jazeera reports 130 killed, although the news is buried in a paragraph at the end of an article denouncing the "Kurd rebels":



http://english.aljazeera.net/news/eu...424526682.html

of course, that is not surprising, Al Jazeera is well known for minimising reports about human rights abuse by any muslim country.

Oh I didn't know Israel is in favour of the Kurds and the PKK. New information for me.

[AngusJS]

Originally Posted by OneToughHerring

Well Turkey is a Nato country, Nato countries have a tendency to do a lot of indiscriminate killing. Just look at the wars in Iraq & Afghanistan + Israel's killing of Palestinians.

Israel is not a NATO member.

Originally Posted by AngusJS

Israel is not a NATO member.

Oh yea, if you're a Nato member you have to pay the US. Israel gets money from the US.

[Weiss Pinguin]

Originally Posted by OneToughHerring

Oh yea, if you're a Nato member you have to pay the US. Israel gets money from the US.

And that makes Israel a member of NATO how?...

[AngusJS]

Originally Posted by OneToughHerring

Oh yea, if you're a Nato member you have to pay the US. Israel gets money from the US.

The cost of NATO is shared among all member states, the US included. Member states don't pay the US.

http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/142718.pdf

page 8

[Onkel Neal]

Originally Posted by OneToughHerring

Oh yea, if you're a Nato member you have to pay the US. Israel gets money from the US.

Originally Posted by anonymous member

is there a reason why OTH is allowed to bait other members for no good reason. I am getting really fed up with this.

Ahem, there is an IGNORE function here, please use it.

[Skybird]

Turkey's treacherous role in the Gaza incident superceded the reporting on the Turkish offensive in the Kurdish area. The operation got some mentioning in the german news, but no major coverage. 10 Turks wounded, 12 Kurds killed, they wrote, and quotes of much nationalistic propaganda and martial threats spilled out by Erdoghan.

In these days that is no headline anymore. The Kurds do not raise any interest anywhere, and to Erdoghans split-tongued poisenous tirades most people already got used by now, somehow.

turkey wants to become a regional dominant power, and sees itself taking claim of the Osman heritage. their new martial posture against the Kurds and their ongoing denial of the Armenian genocide are just two of the more obvious symptoms for that. turkey is clearly turning away from the West, Washington and Europe. If they were a EU member, they nevertheless would do so - but abusing their influence via the EU to do evben more dmage to the West. currently they are busy with reducing and finally neutralising the last bastion of kemalistic influence - the constitutional court, and the military. chances are that these last bastion will fall to the relgious, too. And then it should become obvious for even the most stupid idiot in Europe or Washington that we escaped a worst case scanerio when blocking Turkey from the EU.

We must make them leave NATO as well. they are no longer that reliable ally that - admitted! - they have been for several decades during the cold war. The new Turkey formed by the AKP is no ally, but an opponent at least. and I can imagine future mid-term scenarios when western forces will clash with Turkish forces in the ME - indirectly as well as directly and head on. As I see it, Turkey's role becomes more and more a parallel to that of Pakistan.

I wish their military would start a coup and destroy the AKP, establishing a regime by the generals again. No ideal solution for a Western nation - but Turkey is no Wetsern nation, and in the oprient, dictatorships work quite well. At least they keep the religious in check - something that democracies are not strong enough to acchieve there.

[goldorak]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Turkey's treacherous role in the Gaza incident superceded the reporting on the Turkish offensive in the Kurdish area. The operation got some mentioning in the german news, but no major coverage. 10 Turks wounded, 12 Kurds killed, they wrote, and quotes of much nationalistic propaganda and martial threats spilled out by Erdoghan.

In these days that is no headline anymore. The Kurds do not raise any interest anywhere, and to Erdoghans split-tongued poisenous tirades most people already got used by now, somehow.

turkey wants to become a regional dominant power, and sees itself taking claim of the Osman heritage. their new martial posture against the Kurds and their ongoing denial of the Armenian genocide are just two of the more obvious symptoms for that. turkey is clearly turning away from the West, Washington and Europe. If they were a EU member, they nevertheless would do so - but abusing their influence via the EU to do evben more dmage to the West. currently they are busy with reducing and finally neutralising the last bastion of kemalistic influence - the constitutional court, and the military. chances are that these last bastion will fall to the relgious, too. And then it should become obvious for even the most stupid idiot in Europe or Washington that we escaped a worst case scanerio when blocking Turkey from the EU.

We must make them leave NATO as well. they are no longer that reliable ally that - admitted! - they have been for several decades during the cold war. The new Turkey formed by the AKP is no ally, but an opponent at least. and I can imagine future mid-term scenarios when western forces will clash with Turkish forces in the ME - indirectly as well as directly and head on. As I see it, Turkey's role becomes more and more a parallel to that of Pakistan.

I wish their military would start a coup and destroy the AKP, establishing a regime by the generals again. No ideal solution for a Western nation - but Turkey is no Wetsern nation, and in the oprient, dictatorships work quite well. At least they keep the religious in check - something that democracies are not strong enough to acchieve there.

All true Skybird except that you are forgetting one thing.
Europeans never really wanted Turkey in the union.
It was always the US pressing for this.
With all the problems we have, US ingerence in the european affairs is the last thing we need.
I say it again, for the all the stupid politicians we have, the greatest danger to a unified political and military europe has always been NATO. NATO is the beach head of the US in europe.
It has full filled its role during the cold war but now its just a leftover that does more damage than good.
We need a centralised european military force, without the americans. And NATO is an enourmous obstacle to achieving that goal.

[Bilge_Rat]

In a semi-related story which also surprisingly gets little play, Iran has shelled, bombed and invaded Iraqi territory for the past month:

ALI RASH, Iraq — This remote village high in the rugged mountains along the border with Iran has been deserted, its people having fled Iranian air and artillery bombardments with everything they could carry and whatever livestock that could be coaxed down the steep mountain trails.

Now the hundreds of Kurds who left Ali Rash and other mountain villages are living in sweltering refugee camp tents. They are at the center of questions about whether Iraq is willing or able to defend its borders with Iran — which has repeatedly breached the frontier in recent months.

The attacks on Ali Rash and at least a dozen other Kurdish villages have continued for more than a month and have included a foray by Iranian tanks one mile into Iraqi territory. But they have elicited only a tepid protest from Iraq’s government, including the release of a statement pleading with neighboring countries to honor its borders.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/17/wo.../17border.html

of course, Iran is not attacking Iraq, but Kurdistan which may explain the tepid response from Baghdad, but it is again hard to understand why this type of story does not get a bigger play in the news media or why it has not been raised in the U.N.

not surprisingly, I could not find one word about this story on Al Jazeera's english website.