Defiant Turkey to Move Into N. Iraq

Earlier in the day, Secretary of State Colin Powell had told the pro-Islamic government in Ankara there was "no need" to send troops into Northern Iraq.

U.S. diplomats said Powell had made the comment after all-night talks between U.S. and Turkish officials aimed at pressuring Ankara not to make the move, which had been authorized by the Turkish parliament Thursday.

Gul said Turkey needed a military presence in Northern Iraq to avoid a repetition of the 1991 Gulf War when half a million refugees swarmed across the border. "We don't want to re-live the problem of 1991. Northern Iraq was a vacuum, and this vacuum created the terrorist activity which we don't want to happen again."

This was a reference to the remnants of the separatist Kurdish Workers Party, or PKK, that fled to Northern Iraq after years of bloody clashes with the Turkish army since the late 1980s.

But observers say the dominant reason is Turkish resolve to prevent the Kurds from taking advantage of the present conflict in Iraq to form a breakaway independent state. The Turks fear a Kurdish state on their doorstep could incite their own Kurdish minority to seek independence.

Turkish sources said a contingent of 1,500 troops was going to Northern Iraq. For the moment, analysts said, Ankara was establishing the principle.

In the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War Iraq's Kurdish minority established two autonomous enclaves in Northern Iraq. The United States and its allies declared a no-fly zone to protect the Kurds from Saddam Hussein's Baghdad regime, which was regularly patrolled by U.S. and British planes.

But observers say the lightly armed Kurds regard a Turkish military incursion in force as much of a threat as Saddam. They are afraid that the Turkish presence will become an unofficial occupation.

On Thursday, the Turkish parliament passed legislation allowing U.S. military use of Turkish airspace in the war against Iraq. The same resolution authorized the Turkish army to deploy troops in Northern Iraq.

When the United States objected to the linkage between the overflight rights and troop deployment in Iraq, the Turkish government said it would delay the permission.

But following the Thursday night negotiations and a phone conversation Friday between Powell and Turkish Prime Minister Recip Tayyeb Erdogan, diplomatic sources said, U.S. combat planes were again allowed to fly over Turkish territory.

Earlier on, before I became a paying FREEper, I had chastized Colin Powell by calling him "colon polyp" He seemed to change his tune. However, sadly, he appears to have reversed himself and is again looking to the UN. Now he's a polyp again, and doesn't that just strike me as hunky-dory. Remember, Colon, I don't care if you're GREEN. Just do your job. Department of State should probably depart, along with Department of Educrats, along with God knows who else. Enjoy your night, folks. You have a new FREEper in your midst who pulls no punches and takes no prisoners. Kill 'em, grill 'em, or distill 'em.

The Armenian Genocide was carried out by the "Young Turk" government of the Ottoman Empire in 1915-1916 (with subsidiaries to 1922-23). One and a half million Armenians were killed, out of a total of two and a half million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire.
Most Armenians in America are children or grandchildren of the survivors, although there are still many survivors amongst us.

Armenians all over the world commemorate this great tragedy on April 24, because it was on that day in 1915 when 300 Armenian leaders, writers, thinkers and professionals in Constantinople (present day Istanbul) were rounded up, deported and killed. Also on that day in Constantinople, 5,000 of the poorest Armenians were butchered in the streets and in their homes.

The Armenian Genocide was masterminded by the Central Committee of the Young Turk Party (Committee for Union and Progress [Ittihad ve Terakki Cemiyet, in Turkish]) which was dominated by Mehmed Talât [Pasha], Ismail Enver [Pasha], and Ahmed Djemal [Pasha]. They were a racist group whose ideology was articulated by Zia Gökalp, Dr. Mehmed Nazim, and Dr. Behaeddin Shakir.

The Armenian Genocide was directed by a Special Organization (Teshkilati Mahsusa) set up by the Committee of Union and Progress, which created special "butcher battalions," made up of violent criminals released from prison.

Some righteous Ottoman officials such as Celal, governor of Aleppo; Mazhar, governor of Ankara; and Reshid, governor of Kastamonu, were dismissed for not complying with the extermination campaign. Any common Turks who protected Armenians were killed.

The Armenian Genocide occurred in a systematic fashion, which proves that it was directed by the Young Turk government.

First the Armenians in the army were disarmed, placed into labor battalions, and then killed.

Then the Armenian political and intellectual leaders were rounded up on April 24, 1915, and then killed.

Finally, the remaining Armenians were called from their homes, told they would be relocated, and then marched off to concentration camps in the desert between Jerablus and Deir ez-Zor where they would starve and thirst to death in the burning sun.

On the march, often they would be denied food and water, and many were brutalized and killed by their "guards" or by "marauders." The authorities in Trebizond, on the Black Sea coast, did vary this routine: they loaded Armenians on barges and sank them out at sea.

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