Iraq bans Turkish rebel group PKK

Team Infidel

Forum Spin Doctor
Media: The Associated Press
Byline: n/a
Date: 12 August 2006


BAGHDAD, Iraq_Iraq's government has banned the Kurdistan Workers Party, a
rebel group fighting for autonomy in southeastern Turkey, from operating in
Baghdad, the prime minister's office said Saturday.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki conveyed this to Turkish Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan in a telephone conversation Saturday, a government statement
said.

Al-Maliki told Erdogan of his government's decision "to shut down all the
offices of the Kurdistan Workers Party in the capital Baghdad and banning
them from carrying out any activities," the statement said.

The group, known by the acronym PKK, has battled for Kurdish autonomy in
Turkey's southeast since 1984, a fight that has left some 37,000 people
dead, and the PKK is considered a terrorist organization by Turkey, the
United States and the European Union.

It is unclear where the PKK even has offices. It operates clandestine bases
along the border in Kurdistan, an autonomous region in northern Iraq where
Kurds are in a majority.

Kurds, a distinct ethnic group, are a minority in Iraq as well as in Turkey.
While the Iraqi Kurds secured autonomy after the 1991 Gulf War after Saddam
Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, the demands of the Turkish Kurds remain
unfulfilled.

The banning of PKK is an apparent attempt by Iraq to placate the Turkish
government of Erdogan who last month warned that the Turkish military was
considering a cross-border operation to clear PKK bases in northern Iraq.
His warning came after 15 Turkish soldiers were killed in separate attacks.

The United States, which has some 130,000 troops in Iraq, is strongly
opposed to such an operation. Iraq's President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, has
also said that Iraq's sovereignty and independence should be respected.

But Talabani has also made it clear that the government does not support
PKK's insurgency, saying Iraq's territories should not be "used and
exploited against Turkey."

PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan was captured in 1999 in Kenya and sentenced to
death on charges of treason, but the death sentence was commuted when Turkey
later abolished the death penalty. He now lives on a one-man prison island
in the Marmara Sea off Istanbul.
 
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