LA times roundup of the situation in Turkey. We're done. There is nothing to add.
So we have the people of Turkey:
Each day since the ambush, thousands of Turks have taken to the streets across the nation to demand tough military action. The clamor became so intense that the government attempted to restrict television coverage of the soldiers' funerals and crying mothers.
... ... ...
Ahmed Keskin, 60, said war was necessary to put an end to the "humiliation" that Turks were suffering at the hands of the Kurdish rebels.
"And I'd go straight to northern Iraq, kill the Americans there and then kill Kurds wherever I find them," said Keskin, who makes a living taking photographs of tourists.
We have the Kurds:
In a TV interview Friday, Massoud Barzani, president of Iraq's Kurdistan regional government, accused Turkey of seeking a pretext to mount a major assault in the area. "The PKK is a justification," Barzani told Al Arabiya satellite channel. "The goal is to stop or hamper the growth of Kurdistan region."
And we have the United States, 2007 edition, consistently finding the exact worst thing to say. Nobody could make this up:
On Friday, Army Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon, the commander of U.S. forces in northern Iraq, said he planned to do "absolutely nothing" to counter PKK activity, and that he was neither tracking the rebels' movements nor reinforcing the military presence in the region. Mixon, speaking to Pentagon reporters by videoconference, also said he had not seen Iraqi Kurdish authorities acting against the guerrillas.
The damage is done. I found this article through Swopa at Needlenose. He supposes tourist photographers wanting to kill the Americans in northern Iraq does not have much policy related significance. There is no more important global policy event in 2007 than that tourist photographers in Turkey decided they want to kill Americans.
For the Turkish military and secular forces to get power out of the hands of the Islamists they have to become more anti-American than Erdogan. But when the Islamists and the secularists are in a contest to be the most anti-American, America loses.
At this point there is no military option. The Kurds want a country and the Kurds are going to get a country. The Kurds want land in what is now Turkey. They won't get it in 2007 or 2008 but its coming. Turkey is now dissolving. Turkey now blames the US for its dissolution. In retaliation, Turkey has now begun its shift toward Russia.
If I was Putin, I'd put the brightest minds in the KGB on coming up with a way, any way, regardless of the cost, to keep George Bush in office as President of the USA for the rest of his life. Khameini would do anything he can to help.
