Britons join Kurdish rebels to fight Turks

[Flabbergasted]

Source: The Times

Britons join Kurdish rebels to fight Turks
October 28, 2007

Britons join Kurdish rebels to fight TurksHala Jaber, Qandil mountains, northern Iraq


BRITONS are among foreigners fighting Turkish troops with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in northern Iraq, The Sunday Times can reveal.

According to PKK fighters holed up in one of the natural fortresses of the Qandil mountain range which runs along Iraq’s Turkish and Iranian borders, several Europeans have joined forces with their group.

At least three Britons were in the PKK’s 3,000-strong force, boasted one fighter as he and a group of men huddled in a room discussing the latest clashes with the Turkish army. Others include Russians, Germans, Greeks, Iranians and Arabs. The PKK is labelled by both Europe and America as a terrorist organisation.

As diplomatic efforts to avert war falter, the PKK’s fighters now lie in wait for the mechanised Turkish divisions gathering menacingly along the border. Previous Turkish incursions have failed to deal a mortal blow to the PKK and geography again conspires against them.



Read more: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article2753555.ece

[still_one]

1. I think the headline is a bit misleading, implying that Britian is supporting the PKK

It is more likely that these brits are mercenaries

The fact is the PKK have been crossing over into Turkey for some time now, killing civilians.

The U.S. and the Europeans should get the hell out of there. Their record in the middle east isn't particulary good

[Flabbergasted]

2. The PKK is fighting for what they were promised in WWI. They'll never stop.

I doubt the PKK is hiring mercenaries.

[still_one]

3. and neither will Turkey. In a very short time we will see a major Turkish involvement /nt

[amandabeech]

5. The Brits may also be of Kurdish descent, but were born and raised in the U.K.

The same may be true for some of the other foreigners--they may be members of the Kurdish diaspora.

[IndianaGreen]

4. The PKK is a terrorist group

I am tired of all of these historical victims and their proclivity to inflict injury to people not responsible for past wrongs.

Take the time to find out how the Kurds have behaved toward their neighbors since the US invasion of Iraq, and ask yourselves if you would be so kindly disposed to people that would do the same thing in America.

[ohio2007]

7. and very few "Kurds" belong to this political "PKK" party

something the media 'accidently' leaves out of every PKK story ;)

[knitter4democracy]

9. They're only a terrorist group when the Turks are involved.

Before the Turks started all this with the Kurds in northern Iraq, PKK in Iraq was a group our troops worked with. PKK in Iraq, not a terrorist group. PKK in Turkey, a terrorist group. That makes no sense to me.

There's a Kurdish guy in our area who's always been okay with INS until a couple of years ago because he was in the PKK as a teen and served some time in a Turkish prison. The US took him in, but when Congress made the PKK's terrorist status retroactive, all of a sudden he was in trouble. They're now trying to deport him, even though the community has rallied around him and is trying to talk sense into the INS.

[Flabbergasted]

12. We are still working with the PKK. Notice when the media talks about the PKK....

they are regularly calling them rebels.

[knitter4democracy]

14. True. So, what a messed up policy we have.

In one country, they're rebels, in the next country over, they're terrorists.

[High Plains]

10. Or is the PKK a guerrilla army fighting a war of national liberation?

One man's terrorist...

Actually, I think we should retire "terrorist" and its variants from the political discourse. It usually comes down to "perpetrators of political violence of whom we disapprove."

[BushOut06]

11. Is the PKK fighting Turkish troops, or killing innocent civilians?

If they're going after the Turkish military, then they're not terrorists.

Honestly, I'm really not too familiar with the history of the PKK.

[IndianaGreen]

13. They are killing people indiscriminately, civilians and non-civilians alike

Last week I posted BBC story of a bus being blown up by PKK, 12 civilians killed.

The UN's attempt to redress historical wrongs by the artificial construct of a Jewish state in Palestine should be lesson enough of the pitfalls of trying to address historical grievances. Sometimes the solution leads to unforeseen problems.

[Flabbergasted]

15. I'm not justifying their actions but they do feel justified....

and perhaps rightly so. This is a very old group and part of a long saga of death and war....

If you or I were subject to these circumstances perhaps we'd take up arms as well.

Kurds constitute 20 percent of Turkey's 60 million citizens. In his effort to build nationalism across Turkey in the 1920s, Atatürk instituted a campaign to suppress Kurdish identity that continues today. Teaching and broadcasting in Kurdish are banned. And as recently as 1994, the government jailed for treason politicians who expressed mild pro-Kurdish sentiments. This suppression has helped legitimize the Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK), a quasi-Marxist guerrilla group that champions Kurdish autonomy. Since 1984, Abdullah Ocalan and his army of between 5,000 and 10,000 fighters have been waging a vicious war against Turkey from bases in northern Iraq and Syria. More than 18,000 people have died. The PKK has murdered Turks who teach Kurdish children, Kurds who side with the Turks, and thousands of Turkish soldiers. The PKK has also bombed Turkish targets in Germany. Both Germany and the United States classify the PKK as a terrorist organization.

The Turkish army has responded with equal brutality. It has "de-Kurdified" much of southeastern Turkey, bulldozing as many as 2,500 Kurdish villages and forcing thousands of Kurds to move to cities in western Turkey. And since 1995, Turkish troops have invaded northern Iraq three times to destroy PKK bases.

http://www.slate.com/id/1032/

[IndianaGreen]

16. Perhaps you missed the video of the young girl being dragged from her home and stoned to death

She was a Kurd living in Northern Iraq. Her crime? She dated a Sunni boy. A Kurdish mob broke into her house, dragged her outside, and stoned her to death. The entire incident was captured by video phone, and broadcast by the BBC.

No one has more legitimate claims than the Palestinians, yet we would be fooling ourselves if we were to ignore Palestinian terrorism, or to look at Palestinian acts of violence through the rose colored glasses of victimhood. The same can be said about Israelis, and the same can be said about the Kurds.

I will also remind you that the Iraqi Kurds will never be permitted to have their own state. The Shia won't stand for it, and neither will the Sunni, and the Turkmen.

Like so many victims of oppression, the Kurds have engaged in their own version of oppression against non-Kurds living in Northern Iraq. They are not very nice people, those Kurds.

[Flabbergasted]

18. Well you sure told me. nt

[CONN]

17. Terrorists? Perhaps the Turks?

(who know what is really going on)
...
He claimed that an attack on a minibus, which Turkey blamed on the PKK, was in fact carried out by Turkish soldiers on a Kurdish wedding party...

http://www.iraqupdates.com/p_articles.php/article/23254

[silverlil]

6. oh dear

tell me it is not so! Is this a put up job? Israel is behind all of this shit, why is England being brought into this. Israeli troops have been hanging out in northern iraq since this war started. I am so fedup with Israel.

Turkey is a friend of the UK and US, the last friends we have in the middle east. I do not believe this story. My brother called me yesterday and told me the PM of UK was named Guy Fawkes and I told him no that George Bush had that distinction..... This is horrible news. I do not know what to think.... the London Times used to be a good newspaper before Murdoch bought it out.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

8. (inhales deeply)

IST TEH JOOOOOOOOOOOS!!!!!!!!!1111!!!!11

[Brrrp]

19. I wonder who is paying them. nt