RE: http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,154714,00.html

And I believe they have every right to attack. The PKK is no different than other terror group. I read a news source that over many years the PKK have killed close to 30,000 turks.
If we can go after Osama for 9/11 Turkey has every right to go after the PKK. I think they have restrained themselves quite long enough.

turky has been oppressing the kurds for thousands of years....the pkk is just an excuse for them to continue their oppression of the kurds... funny the pkk started to fight off the turks and get their land back... but as i hear the majority of kurds dont want the old kurdastian but just left alone and able to be free people....

and there are only 10-15 thousand pkk members so lets just see how many kurds the turks plan on killing offf....

Outlaw-don;t look now but the USG is going to bomb the PKK back to the stone age. Sorry Groovey looks like you backed a loser on this one.

Well, let's see, what a mess we've made of things! We have the Kurds that get business investment and electricity from Turkey, starting a war with said supplier. Isn't that a fine "Howdy do". No matter what WE do we lose! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA Now if that don't beat all.

Well I've been saying for 5 years now, things would eventually boil down to this, "No Win" situation! Anyone with one brain cell still firing, if they took the time, which they won't, would read a little histroy on this region. These people have been fighting like this long before the dawn of written history, which BTW predates 10,000 years.

What to do, now that we've reached an entirely new level of hostilities? I have one answer, the same one I've had prior to the INVASION and OCCUPATION of Iraq, i.e., get our butts out of Dodge as fast as we can and stay the hell out of their business! They practise "Population Control", and swap women by sacking each others villages, this helps prevent interbreeding amoung other things for god sakes. When I lived in the Middle East and worked there my boss told me, he was arab, that American's are sooo stupid, they meddle in everyones business while they can't even take care of their own! I think it is self evident that he hit the nail on the head!

I not only think, feel and know, we should get our butts out of the middle east, and as well I believe we have absolutely no business being their in the first place! I wonder, is anyone steering this ship or did we finally sell it to our new Chinese debt holder's? By the looks of the State of the State, we probably just gave it all away for free. I hope you get a book on speaking Chinese, I got mine and by this time next year I'll be fluent in it!

Someone please tell me, just what in hell are we doing in Iraq anyway? Tell me something I don't know.

I see a nasty trend developing. Turkey is about to target all inhabitants of Northern Iraq with sanctions of one type or another in an effort to deal with a small element of extremeists. They are also looking into military actions that will violate the sovereignty of Iraq.

I suggest that this is a trend because a similar approach was taken when we invaded Iraq. We did so with the intent of eliminating sources of extremeism that we had not pinpointed. As a result extremeism continues to be a problem across Iraq.

The actions of Israel in their neighboring Palestinian territories and Lebanon also prompted me to call this a trend. In each of these actions Israel has failed to pinpoint those directly responsible for attacks on their homeland, instead opting for an approach that pressures all inhabitants in an effort to control the few. Here too this decades long practice has led only to a continuation of the conflict.

Military strategists since Sun Tzu have been careful to emphasize the importance of knowing and targetting the enemy directly. Most warn against the type of actions that are now common place, specifically because they end in the exceedingly complex atmospheres that we have today in much of the Middle East.

As time goes by, these environments become more and more difficult for military strategists as they are forced to deal with a number of enemy forces, most of whom employ guerilla type tactics and operate independant of any central command structure. When this happens it becomes impossible for any foreign military to gain control of the environment, unless long term and in many cases permanent and widespread occupation is an option. And even then, it is sure to take decades before the environment stabilizes.

The solution is to establish working relationships with local governments and to work with them to manage the irritating elements. Once a good system is in place it merely requires periodic adjustments to remain effective. And while this is not an immediate solution, of which there may not be any to begin with, it does offer nations a way to maintain working relationships, even when extremeists threaten to force an end to them.

quote:

Originally posted by DanDaily:
Well I've been saying for 5 years now, things would eventually boil down to this, "No Win" situation! Anyone with one brain cell still firing, if they took the time, which they won't, would read a little histroy on this region. These people have been fighting like this long before the dawn of written history, which BTW predates 10,000 years.

Honestly, you find a spot on this Earth and do your research and you will find a similar scenario in each of those locations. There are periods of war and of peace everywhere that you look throughout history. Europe is currently in a period of peace, but go back a few decades and you find them at war. The history of the Americas is no different, if you care to piece it back together by investigating the histories of the many native societies that once existed here, and if you don't you can see that war was the norm here up until some time in the 1800's when most native societies were passified and the new nations had established boundaries.

The Turks didn't actually get to the region until about a thousand years ago. A long time ago for us in the New World, not as long for those in the Old World.

The Turks have a right to defend their border, but to insist on the turning over of PKK leaders to the Turkish government is an excuse to increase military activity. The U.S. needs to weigh in on who is more important to the U.S. at this juncture, Turkey or the Kurds. I would think Turkey. We can work to arrange peaceful negotiations with the Kurds. We can't afford to lose Turkey as an ally.

quote:

Originally posted by TaxmanJim:
The Turks didn't actually get to the region until about a thousand years ago. A long time ago for us in the New World, not as long for those in the Old World.

well just a change of names but the same people from the same area...

When push comes to shove, the US will let Turkey go in and deal with the PKK or the rest of the world will expose us as full of rank hypocrisy (it's ok for us to go invade countries to eliminate a terrorist threat but not ok for others to do it). As a recognized terrorist organization with a history of attacking and killing innocent civilians in a few countries, the PKK is fair game to be hunted down by whomever they have attacked. The non-PKK Kurds aren't helping the situation because they are helping hide these same terrorists from justice.

Any azz-kicking the PKK gets, they have coming to them.

the majority of kurds do not support the pkk... they are not all that popular with the kurds... the kurds just want to be left alone and live as free people and not oppressed....

quote:

Originally posted by TinyTerror:

quote:

Originally posted by DanDaily:
Well I've been saying for 5 years now, things would eventually boil down to this, "No Win" situation! Anyone with one brain cell still firing, if they took the time, which they won't, would read a little histroy on this region. These people have been fighting like this long before the dawn of written history, which BTW predates 10,000 years.

Honestly, you find a spot on this Earth and do your research and you will find a similar scenario in each of those locations. There are periods of war and of peace everywhere that you look throughout history. Europe is currently in a period of peace, but go back a few decades and you find them at war. The history of the Americas is no different, if you care to piece it back together by investigating the histories of the many native societies that once existed here, and if you don't you can see that war was the norm here up until some time in the 1800's when most native societies were passified and the new nations had established boundaries.

AMEN BROTHER, you are sooo right on the mark!
Therein is the exact problem, a problem sooo deap that it defies any "Western Logic"! People on this site, who've never been to the Middle East, or rather have not lived and worked there for a few years, can't possibly grasp the mentality of these people. We call them stupid, insane, crazy, hostile, terriorists, and everyother nasty name we can think of. But, the simple unvarnished truth is they DO NOT THINK LIKE WE DO! Compaired to us in the West, their logic is defective, disjointed, and otherwise fragmented. However, understand, to them this logic is the norm and WE AIN'T GONNA CHANGE IT BROTHER'S. Not in this lifetime! If you can't change the way people think or behave, and you understand that you will never change that, what alternatives are left!
1) Kill em all, let Allah sort em out?
2) Stay the hell away from them and let a few hundred years go by and hope they will change and become like us? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
3) Buy their damn oil until it runs out and leave them alone?

I like option #3 the best. If you can't beat em join em! Only a drunk, drug addict or fool keeps doing the exact same thing, over and over, expecting different results! One last thing to keep in mind. While it is true that it took us over 100 years to tame the 'Wild West', i.e., the Sioux Indians, (and I am one of those btw) the truth is they still think exactly like they did 500 years ago, and they would eat your lunch if they had 1/2 chance! Today they are making a fortune off the gaming places they run. I have to wonder what the future will bring when the Sioux have more money then their white neighbor's? HAHAHAHAHAHAH LMFAO! Well brother's guess what, the Middle East is no different. You can smash a people to pieces, you can enslave them, kill them, even put them in concentration camps. But, sooner or later the day will come when they rise up and fight back to those who've oppressed them! What we are doing to these people in Iraq will be our undoing. We absolutely need to get our butts out of Iraq and do everything we can to apoligize for the harm we've caused this nation! But, with people as who we have in office today running this war, to profit themselves and their frineds, THAT AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN EITHER!

SEMPER FI BROTHER'S

I agree Dan. We made a terrible mistake by trying to intervene in something we could never in a million years hope to understand-the ways of the Middle East. Let them solve there own problems-Same with the Israelis and Palestinians. There have been numerous opportunities for the Palestinians to succeed but violence and their real agenda (getting the Jews out of "Palestine" and outside influence from Muslim radicals have stopped that. The idea of bringing justness to a corrupt culture is indeed noble but like you said-its really about the war profiteers which has always plagued this nations wars, including the American revolution. As to the topic of the thread- We can only side with Turkey, there is not a choice in the matter. As soon as you label a group a "terrorist" group then it is by default because of our proclamation to the world that we are against them. We need to undo lots of mistakes before we are labeled as such.

quote:

Originally posted by outlaws93:
the majority of kurds do not support the pkk... they are not all that popular with the kurds... the kurds just want to be left alone and live as free people and not oppressed....

Well then, they need to get off their butts and dispose of the PKK. The Kurds in general have made business agreements with Turkey, and they should understand they have a vested interest in stopping this group.

quote:

Originally posted by outlaws93:
the majority of kurds do not support the pkk... they are not all that popular with the kurds... the kurds just want to be left alone and live as free people and not oppressed....

Nice post Outlaw.
Not many people understand there are many differing factions of the Kurds. With somewhere between 3- 6 million Kurds (without a home/country) the PKK is the nasty ganster in an otherwise fairly peaceful democratic non-nation.

Trying to hold back Turkey from their vengeance is like tring to continue giving land back to terrorists in Israel with hopes of peace....it's a major cluster****.

I kind of agree with the Turks. The PKK may be an ally of Al-Qaeda. Their goal is to try to set up a radical Islamic state. They seem to have failed in Iraq so to incite insurgents in Turkey to overthrow the government the the Turkish government should be able to protect their own territory.

Hamdallah-Go git em Broderick

quote:

Originally posted by Erichs:
I kind of agree with the Turks. The PKK may be an ally of Al-Qaeda. Their goal is to try to set up a radical Islamic state. They seem to have failed in Iraq so to incite insurgents in Turkey to overthrow the government the the Turkish government should be able to protect their own territory.

Hamdallah-Go git em Broderick

Where did you get that balls from?

Allied with Al Qaeda? Radical Islamic state?
It's the Kurdistan Workers Party - Kurdish nationalism combined with a bit of Marxism (which has largely dropped away of late) I doubt they have any more time for al Qaeda than anyone else.

quote:

The PKK may be an ally of Al-Qaeda

nope they are not...

Great posts on this one!!!
I do have to wonder how the cheap politically motivated rantings of our elected officials against Turkey over something that happened 100 years ago has played into this.