Turkey-Kurdish+War

Fact Sheet Turkey / Kurdish war. The Kurds are a large and distinct ethnic minority in the Middle East, numbering some 25-30 million people. The area that they have inhabited-referred to on maps for centuries as "Kurdistan"-spans modern day Iran, Iraq , Syria , and Turkey. Half of the Kurds reside in Turkey, where they comprise over 20 percent of the Turkish population. Russia and Turkey both straddle Europe and Asia and emerged out of multi-ethnic empires. In both, rapid economic modernisation is creating super-wealthy elites and widening inequalities. The western-leaning cultural capital ( St Petersburg and Istanbul ) vies for influence and status with the more inward- looking seat of government ( Moscow and Ankara ). Turkey 's current military offensive inside northern Iraq has touched off a crisis - one to which several other players in the region have contributed. Although the ultimate responsibility for ending this crisis falls on Turkey, all of the others, including the United States are some what expected to do their part to prevent a larger regional conflagration. Turkey 's ostensible reason for sending 10,000 troops into the mountainous north of Iraq is to punish the separatist guerrilla group known as the PKK for its terrorist operations and attacks on Turkish soldiers inside Turkey. the Kurdish Regional Government in the north of Iraq has charged that Turkey has an ulterior motive: to destabilize that relatively peaceful and prosperous area. The Kurds of northern Iraq fly their own flag; they have their own disciplined armed forces, known as pesh merga; and they prohibit the Iraqi Army from setting foot on their soil. The Kurdish Regional Government suspects that Turkey 's fiercely nationalistic generals want not only to deliver a blow to the PKK, but also to show that they will not tolerate independence for the Iraqi Kurds. Nationalistic forces in Turkey make no effort to hide their anxiety about self-determination for Kurds in Iraq. They worry that Turkish Kurds - who have recently gained greater cultural and linguistic rights because of Turkey 's efforts to gain acceptance by the European Union - will contemplate an autonomous Kurdish region in Iraq and demand similar self-government for themselves. the Shiite militia leader Moktada al-Sadr has threatened to send fighters to the north if Turkish troops do not withdraw from Iraqi soil. And Turkey is warning that it may leave troops in northern Iraq, to block PKK routes into southeastern Turkey, even after its main invasion force returns home in two or three weeks. Some say the Bush administration should lean on Turkey, a NATO ally, to stop its helicopter gunship and artillery attacks - which are hitting civilian villages, bridges and roads - and withdraw its forces immediately. America 's only true ally in Iraq, the Kurds