Turkish attack abandoned villages inside the border of Iraqi Kurdistan

Turkish helicopter gunships and warplanes attacked abandoned villages just inside the border of Iraqi Kurdistan yesterday as Kurdish guerrillas killed four Turkish soldiers in a clash inside Turkey.

Turkey has repeatedly threatened to send its 160,000-strong army stationed in south eastern Turkey into northern Iraq in retaliation for the actions of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) operating from camps in the mountainous border regions of Iraqi Kurdistan.

“I was on the other side of the mountain when I heard huge explosions and could smell TNT powder all over the area,” said a shepherd called Ibrahim Mazori. Other witnesses said that villages of Nazdori, Kashani and Baashish east of the border town of Zakho were bombed for half an hour.

Colonel Hussein Tamir, an Iraqi army officer who supervises border guards, said the air strikes took place before dawn and there were no casualties.

Turkey has threatened so frequently to send its ground forces into Iraqi Kurdistan in pursuit of the PKK that it will be increasing difficult for it not to act if it continues to lose troops in clashes with the Turkish Kurd fighters.

It would be almost impossible for the Turkish army to find the PKK guerrillas who operate in small groups in the vast mountain ranges along the frontiers between Turkey, Iraq and Iran. The PKK has some 2,750 fighters in Turkey, 2,500 in Iraqi Kurdistan and 1,500 in Iran. Many of their fighters live in mobile camps consisting of plastic sheeting, which the guerrillas carry with them, stretched over a framework of poles and camouflaged with hay and grass. There are not many paved roads in the mountains though the PKK uses tractors and four-wheel drive vehicles to drive along river beds.

The abandoned villages that came under attack yesterday are in an area of high mountains and well-watered valleys where farmers tend apple orchards and fruit trees. Turkey has been intermittently shelling the area for years in order to show its strength, but tries to avoid casualties by firing into the fields. Along the road east of Zakho there are half a dozen Turkish bases on Iraqi territory as a result of agreements reached under Saddam Hussein.

The authorities of the Kurdistan Regional Government, the quasi-independent Kurdish enclave, are resisting Turkish pressure to move against the PKK. They have, however, told their military checkpoints in mountainous regions to stop journalists visiting areas where the PKK are present.

Meanwhile a lieutenant and three privates from the Turkish army died in a clash in Sirnak province across the border from Zakho. They were the heaviest Turkish losses since 16 soldiers were killed and eight captured on 21 October in a fight which came close to provoking a Turkish invasion.

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan saw President Bush in Washington on 5 November and the US promised to share intelligence about the PKK, possibly enabling it to carry out limited attacks. Mr Erdogan has talked very tough, but would like to avoid military operations that would achieve little against the PKK, anger the US and alienate the Turkish Kurds, many of whom voted for Mr Erdogan’s party in the Turkish general election on 22 July.

Ideally Turkey would like to repeat its success of 1999 when it forced Syria to expel the PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan by threatening to invade Syria which had supported him for some 20 years. He fled to Kenya and was later abducted by Turkish intelligence from Nairobi and brought back to Turkey where he was put on trial.

Despite Mr Ocalan being in jail and fully cooperating with his captors the PKK still regards him with the fervour of a religious cult. It continually demands that he should be freed or given better conditions in prison.