Ankara: Turkey's prime minister will ask parliament next week to authorise a military push into north Iraq to fight Kurdish rebels amid Turkish anger yesterday at a US vote branding Ottoman Turk killings of Armenians genocide.
Analysts say a large Turkish cross-border incursion remains unlikely, but Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's government will seek authorisation for it after a public holiday which ends on Sunday, a ruling party member said.
Washington fears such a move could destabilise Iraq's most peaceful area and potentially the wider region, but Erdogan has been under mounting pressure to act after Wednesday's vote on the highly sensitive issue of the killings in 1915 of Armenians.
The US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee approved a resolution branding the killings genocide - a charge Turkey hotly denies. The resolution was proposed by a lawmaker with many Armenian-Americans in his district.
The United States relies on Turkish bases to supply its war effort in Iraq. Any Turkish offensive into northern Iraq would strain ties with Washington and possibly hurt Turkey's European Union accession bid.
Complication
European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana warned Turkey against a possible incursion. "Any possibility of complicating even more the security situation in Iraq should not be welcome and therefore that's the message that we passed to our Turkish friends," he said.
Ankara says 3,000 rebels from the outlawed separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) are based in northern Iraq from where they stage deadly attacks into Turkey.
"The resolution won't go to parliament today. It will be sent to parliament after Bayram [public holiday]," the senior ruling AK Party lawmaker, who declined to be named, told Reuters. The holiday begins on October 12 and ends on October 14.
The Turkish government cautioned that relations with its Nato ally would be harmed by the US committee's decision. The non-binding resolution now goes to the floor of the US House of Representatives, where Democratic leaders say there will be a vote by mid-November.
Ankara will now lobby Congress to prevent the Bill from being approved. Erdogan is due to travel to Washington in early November for talks with US President George W. Bush.
The Bush administration on Wednesday urged Turkey not to take any "concrete" action after the congressional committee angered Ankara by passing the Armenia genocide resolution. "We hope very much that the disappointment can be limited to statements and not extend to anything concrete that would interfere with the very good way that we have been working with the Turks for many years," US Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns said.
The committee's decision on Wednesday is expected to weaken US influence over Turkey, which has Nato's second-largest army, at a time when the government ponders whether to push for the military operation into mainly Kurdish northern Iraq. "Unfortunately there is a linkage between the Bill and a Turkish incursion into northern Iraq...," said Faruk Logoglu, a former Turkish envoy.
