Word: turkish
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Turkish government says they're not here. The Turkish military says they are, and the authorities in Iraqi Kurdistan say they aren't and never will be. It's still unclear whether any Turkish troops have entered northern Iraq, in open defiance of the United States and Europe, and if so where they are. So I spent a couple of days this weekend driving around the mountains of far northern Iraq looking for myself...
...Barmani, a village in the northwest of Iraqi Kurdistan, the Turkish presence is blatant. Just on the side of the road, about 20 tanks rest in an abandoned military airport, many covered with tarps. A few bored Turkish soldiers sit watching the cars drive by. But this is not the Turkish invasion the Kurds have been fearing - these troops have been here since 1996, when they came to fight the Kurdish Workers Party, the famed PKK, who had taken refuge here in Iraq. The PKK is long gone from this part of Kurdistan but the Turkish troops have remained...
...Even after Turkey's parliament agreed to allow the U.S. the right to use Turkish airspace, negotiations at the executive level broke down over disagreements between Washington and Ankara over Turkey's role in northern Iraq, suggesting that the potential for violent clashes between Turkish and Kurdish forces remains high. And that creates an incentive for the U.S. to take control of the most prized piece of real estate in that conflict. That would have been a lot easier, of course, if Turkey had allowed the U.S. to launch a ground invasion from its territory...
...Iraq along sectarian lines. They fear that the power vacuum created by the end of 24 years of Saddam's absolute rule will ignite an orgy of sectarian struggles and vendetta killings among Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds. They worry that this, in turn, will prompt the intervention of Turkish and Iranian military forces seeking the protection of their respective interests. The dread is that America's war will turn Iraq into "another Palestine," a consuming crisis that feeds Middle East instability for decades to come...
...against civilians, its first task is to appoint a prosecutor - a politically sensitive decision, since it is the prosecutor who will decide which cases the court pursues. Still Divided CYPRUS Talks aimed at reunifying the divided island before the Greek section joins the E.U. next year broke down when Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash rejected a U.N. power-sharing proposal, despite support for the plan from opposition parties and tens of thousands of Turkish Cypriots. Denktash insisted on formal recognition for the northern Turkish part of the island and objected to a requirement that he said "would force...