Turkish commandos are patrolling the snowy, mountainous region of northern Iraq Sunday as a major ground operation targeting Kurdish rebels continues for a third day.
"It has been understood from preliminary information that the terrorists have suffered heavy losses," said a source within the Turkish military, which has deployed special forces units backed up by jets and helicopter gunships. "According to intelligence, the (PKK) leaders are trying to flee southwards in panic."
Turkish commanders said the operation is codenamed Gunes, after a three-year-old girl whose father, Kasim Aksoy, was one of 13 members of a crack Turkish unit killed in a PKK ambush in October. Pictures of Gunes standing in bare feet and ragged clothing at her father's funeral fuelled the outrage, and are believed to have strengthened Ankara's resolve to move against the PKK. Turkey's military says 15 of its soldiers and at least 112 Kurdish rebels have been killed during the operation. Turkey says the incursion is aimed at protecting Turkish people from attacks carried out by rebels based in Iraq.
Turkey's military said on Friday it had launched a cross-border land offensive backed by fighter jets into northern Iraq on Thursday evening to hunt down Kurdish PKK terorists. Suspected camps of Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) militants were targeted between 1000 (0800 GMT) and 1800 (1600 GMT) on Thursday, according to a statement on the general staff website. "Following this successful offensive, a cross-border ground operation backed by the Air Force was launched at 1900 [1700 GMT]," said the statement. "The Turkish Armed Forces, which attach great importance to Iraq's territorial integrity and stability, will return home in the shortest time possible after its goals have been achieved," the General Staff said in a statement posted on its Web site. An unconfirmed report by Turkish TV channel NTV says 10,000 soldiers have crossed the border. An US official said Washington had been cooperating fully with Turkey in providing intelligence on PKK positions in northern Iraq since last November to enable the Turkish air force to make pinpointed attacks minimizing civilian casualties.
Turkey's parliament approved a law Wednesday to return properties confiscated by the state to Christian and Jewish minority foundations — a key reform demanded by the European Union. The EU has long been pressing Turkey to pass the measure that would allow the foundations belonging to minority groups to reclaim seized assets — including churches, school buildings and orphanages — that were registered in the names of saints. EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn hailed Turkey for adopting the law. "The adoption of the new law on foundations is a welcome step forward," he said. "This is an important issue for Turkey, and one that all EU institutions have regularly highlighted as important to ensure fundamental rights and freedoms for all Turkish citizens." However, Rehn said: "It is implementation that will be the test of Turkey's progress in ensuring rights and freedoms." The law would also allow Muslim foundations to receive financial aid from foreign countries.
Disputes between Ankara and Paris over Armenian genocide claims and Turkey's bid to join the European Union should not be allowed to hurt business ties, France's foreign trade minister said on Tuesday.
France's lower house of parliament infuriated the Turks in 2006 by backing a bill that would make it a crime to deny that mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks during World War One amounted to genocide. France's Senate never ratified the bill.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has also upset Turkey by opposing the large Muslim but secular nation's EU entry bid.
"It is true that political disputes have affected economic decisions ... but (business) decisions should be taken on economic grounds," Herve Novelli said after signing an 80 million euro ($117.8 million) credit deal between Turkey's Halkbank and the French Development Agency.
Ankara has opposed Gaz de France's involvement in a natural gas pipeline project because of the genocide bill.
Last week, the European Union's coordinator for the proposed Nabucco pipeline said during a visit to Ankara that Gaz de France should not be excluded from the project, which aims to carry Caspian gas to Europe via Turkey and the Balkans.
But Energy Minister Hilmi Guler described Nabucco as a done deal and noted that its partners had agreed on Germany's RWE as the sixth partner, eliminating Gaz de France.
Turkey has decided to recognize Kosovo as an independent state, Foreign Minister Ali Babacan said on Monday, a day after the breakaway majority Albanian province declared its independence from Serbia.
Turkey's recognition is symbolically important because Ottoman Turks ruled the Balkans, including Serbia and Kosovo, for centuries. Orthodox Christian Serbs still mourn their military defeat in Kosovo in 1389 at Muslim Turkish hands.
"The Republic of Turkey ... has decided to recognize the independence of the Republic of Kosovo," Babacan said in a statement faxed to Reuters.
Turkey seeks lasting peace and stability in the Balkan region, he said, adding that Ankara hopes to continue improving its relations with Serbia.
Ankara's relations with Belgrade, strained during the violent breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s when Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo came under Serbian attack, have improved considerably since the overthrow in 2000 of Slobodan Milosevic.
The future of Turkey’s European Union bid could hinge on the February 17 presidential election in Cyprus. The prospect of a new Greek Cypriot leadership may offer the last chance for uniting the divided island, analysts say. Permanent division, experts add, would create a lasting source of political tension that not only could prevent Turkey’s EU accession, but also hamper the EU’s and NATO’s strategic capabilities.
"The results of the election will be important, if we are going to have a move forward," says Philippos Savvides, Greek Cypriot political analyst based in Athens. Brussels is set to review progress on Turkey’s membership bid in 2009, leaving this year as the only window of opportunity to make headway on the Cyprus issue, Savvides says. "It will be a mess if we don’t have a resolution."
Cyprus has been split since 1974, when Turkey invaded the island’s northern part to safeguard its Turkish Cypriot community, which comprised some 20 percent of the total population. With United Nations peacekeepers monitoring a ceasefire line separating the island’s Greek and Turkish parts, the Cyprus issue has made little progress toward reunification over the decades.
Chancellor Angela Merkel and senior conservative allies hit back at Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan after he urged Turks living in Germany to keep their traditions and resist assimilation. Speaking in Cologne on Sunday at the end of a four-day trip to Germany which highlighted differences, Erdogan said Turks residing here should learn German, but urged them not to give up their Turkish identities and called assimilation a "crime against humanity". The comments sparked sharp reactions from Merkel and members of her conservatives, who have long argued that immigrant groups must fully adapt to the German way of life, including abandoning aspects of their native cultures. "If they are citizens, then of course I expect them to behave as full citizens without qualification. Their loyalties are then to the German state," Merkel told reporters in Hamburg, when asked about Erdogan's remarks.
Turkey's parliament lifted a ban on Saturday on female students wearing the Muslim headscarf at university, a landmark decision that some Turks fear will undermine the foundations of their secular state. Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's ruling AK Party, which has Islamist roots, hailed parliament's move as a triumph for democracy and justice in Turkey, a European Union candidate country where two thirds of women cover their heads. "Our main aim is to end the discrimination experienced by a section of society just because of their personal beliefs," AK Party lawmaker Sadullah Ergin told private broadcaster NTV, adding that 80 percent of lawmakers had backed the reforms. But underlining the powerful emotions the headscarf evokes, tens of thousands of people waving Turkish flags and chanting secularist slogans staged a protest rally against the changes just a few km (miles) from the parliament in central Ankara. President Abdullah Gul is expected to approve the reform soon. The government must also amend a law governing the state body for higher education before the changes can take effect. Turkey's powerful secular establishment, which includes army generals, judges and university rectors, sees the headscarf as a symbol of radical Islam and believe it threatens the country's secular order. Turkey is 99 percent Muslim.
The West doesn’t know quite what to think of Turkey’s Islamic-oriented ruling party: does it envision a liberal, European future for Turkey or an Islamist one? A vote this week on the seemingly minor issue of whether head scarves should be allowed at universities will help us begin to answer that question.
The ban on women covering their heads on campus has long been a thorn in the side of the Justice and Development Party. The rule has the perverse effect of keeping devoutly religious women out of higher education. A few years ago, while on a trip to lecture about Islam, I met a daughter of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan — not in Istanbul, but at Indiana University, which she was attending at least in part so she could cover her head while getting an education.
The ban — a relic of the aggressive secularism enforced by modern Turkey’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk — can be repealed only by a constitutional amendment. Such an amendment was just one of dozens of changes that the Justice and Development Party was expected to propose a few weeks ago as part of a comprehensive overhaul of Turkey’s state-centered, ethnically narrow Constitution.
The United States has asked Turkey to fight against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan with operational forces.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates reportedly sent a letter to the Turkish government saying Turkey should help more actively in the fight against terrorism in Afghanistan.
He reportedly suggested that Turkey should deploy operational forces and fight Taliban in eastern and southern Afghanistan.
Gates wanted Turkey to deploy more troops in Afghanistan but if this was not possible then it wanted Turks to redefine the role of their existing troops in the country and allow them to be involved in combat missions.
Turkish forces are currently stationed only in Kabul and are not involved in military operations. They are allowed to shoot only if they come under attack.
Observers said the U.S. now wants Turkey to be more involved in Afghanistan in return for its backing against the PKK in northern Iraq. The U.S. is providing real time intelligence and opening Iraqi airspace for Turkish jets to raid PKK hideouts in northern Iraq.
Turkey's parliament has approved a constitutional amendment that would ease the ban on women wearing Islamic headscarves in universities.
Headscarves were banned from campuses after pressure from the staunchly secularist military ousted a government seen as too Islamist in 1997.
Wednesday's vote was carried by 397 in favour to 113 against. Final approval is expected in a vote on Saturday.
The Islamist-rooted AK Party has a safe majority in the Turkish parliament.
As Turkey's population is predominantly Muslim, two-thirds of all Turkish women cover their heads, meaning thousands miss out on the opportunity to attend college. Many Turks argue that is unfair.
The government wants to allow traditional scarves tied under the chin, although more enveloping versions would still be banned.
In Wednesday's heated debate, Bekir Bozdag, deputy chairman of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), said the amendment bill would strengthen Turkey's characteristic principle of secularism.
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