The Turkish government has submitted the motion for a
cross-border operation to fight against the banned Kurdish Workers'
Party (PKK) to the parliament, government spokesman and Deputy
Prime Minister Cemil Cicek said on Monday.
After about six hour's meeting of the Council of Ministers,
Cicek told reporters that the Anti-Terror Supreme Board made a
decision regarding preparation for a motion allowing Turkish Armed
Forces to launch a cross-border operation in its last meeting.
"Ministers decided on submission of this motion to the
parliament as of Monday. Prime minister and ministers signed the
motion. I expect that it will be debated in the parliament this
week," Cicek said.
"Our wish is that we will not have to use this motion... but the
most painful reality of our country, our region, is terror," said
Cicek.
Cicek indicated that the motion was only targeted at the PKK,
adding that it would be valid for one year.
Meanwhile, Iraq's Vice-President Tariq al-Hashimi will arrive in
Istanbul on Tuesday morning and later proceed to Ankara for a visit
to Turkey.
On Friday, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said
Turkey has long been seeking the cooperation of Iraq and the United
States in its fight against the PKK, but there has been no
crackdown on the rebels.
Mentioning a recent anti-terrorism deal signed with Iraq,
Erdogan said it was not valid since it had not been approved by
Iraq's parliament yet.
Turkey's Supreme Anti-Terror Board convened last Tuesday,
issuing a fresh warning of a possible cross-border incursion into
northern Iraq to chase separatist rebels and the government sent a
request for approval to parliament which is expected to make
decision as early as this week.
Officials and analysts had warned that the possibility for
across-border operation into Iraq would increase after the US
Congress passed a resolution backing Armenian allegations of
genocide at the hands of the late Ottoman Empire, as the Turkish
anger over the resolution might induce it to brush aside the US
opposition to an unilateral Turkish action in Iraq.
On Wednesday, US House of Representatives Committee on Foreign
Affairs approved a resolution labeling the killings of Armenians
between 1915 to 1917 a genocide.
The resolution drew the immediate condemnation from the Turkish
government, though it would have no binding effect on the US
foreign policy.
Armenians say more than 1.5 million Armenians were killed in a
systematic genocide in the hands of the Ottomans during World War
I, before modern Turkey was born in 1923, while Turkey insists the
Armenians were victims of widespread chaos and governmental
breakdown as the 600-year-old empire collapsed in the years
before1923.
The PKK has increased its attacks on government troops in
southeastern Turkey, which led to rising Turkish demands for an
incursion into northern Iraq to crush the rebels based there.
The group, listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the US
and the EU, launched an armed campaign for an ethnic homeland in
the mainly Kurdish southeastern Turkey in 1984, sparking decades of
strife that has claimed more than 30,000 lives.
(Xinhua News Agency October 16, 2007)
