U.S. Reportedly Frees 11 Turkish Troops

AP ^ | 7/6/2003 | JAMES C. HELICKE

[a_Turk]

ISTANBUL, Turkey - The United States on Sunday released 11 Turkish special forces detained in northern Iraq (news - web sites), Turkish news reports said, ending a standoff that strained efforts by the NATO (news - web sites) allies to repair relations frayed over the Iraq war.

The soldiers were released in Baghdad, private CNN-Turk and NTV news channels reported. The soldiers will spend the night at a guesthouse before being taken Monday morning to the northern Iraqi city of Sulaymaniyah, where they had been captured Friday, the media reported.

The soldiers were released after a bustle of diplomacy that included telephone calls Sunday between Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites) as well as another between U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) and Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul.

The detention of the Turkish special forces Friday in the northern Iraqi city of Sulaymaniyah outraged Turkey and deepened the public's mistrust of the United States.

Turkey has long had thousands of its soldiers in parts of northern Iraq to fight autonomy-seeking Kurdish rebels who have launched attacks against Turkey from bases in northern Iraq.

After the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, it also sent military advisers there to keep watch on Iraqi Kurds. Turkey fears that increasing Kurdish power in northern Iraq could encourage Kurdish rebels to revive fighting in Turkey's predominantly Kurdish southeast.

[a_Turk]

ping

[Mortimer Snavely]

Good news. What a screw up.

[a_Turk]

Love reading how terrorsts are referred to as rebels.. How does the term "Al Qaeda rebels" sound? Pathetic..

[EGPWS]

Good news. What a screw up Prudence.

[Farnham]

I guess the Turks are getting the message that they missed the boat. Too bad, so sad.

As my Mom told me a thousand times (or more): "You should have thought of that BEFORE."

[MarMema]

Good day to you and my best to you as well.

[marron]

Good news. The Americans have made their point, the Turks and the Yanks have looked each other in the eye, and there is hopefully less room for misunderstanding going forward.

[Cultural Jihad]

Let them observe all they want to, but leave their teams of political assassins at home.

[a_Turk]

Gotto be stupid to think that we'd send commandos to assassinate some puppet. Someone is leading yous by your nose-rings..

[Mortimer Snavely]

It's enough to make one want to spew.

[Destro]

Like your support of Albanian "rebels" of Kosovo?????

[marron]

Gotto be stupid to think that we'd send commandos to assassinate some puppet.

Could be. But the press reports surrounding the incident claim that the Americans believed that to be the case, and supposedly that was the motive behind the arrest of the Turkish soldiers.

If we know anything, its that press accounts can be shaded or incomplete, when they are not wrong. What are you reading, from your sources, that would explain the episode? Keeping in mind that Turkish sources run the same risks of bias as do western sources.... but different biases may lead the writers to include different details that other writers may leave out...

[a_Turk]

It was you who suppported them..

[Cultural Jihad]

It depends. If they are being treated as criminally as the Armenians were a hundred years ago, then rebel sounds okay.

[a_Turk]

What takes the cake is that the US forces would go on some dubious informant's dubious information and stick themselves.

Turkey is recalling her officers from that command center you've got in Tampa. Too bad.

[He Rides A White Horse]

Good news. What a screw up.

Yeah............nothing like some Turkish special forces putting a few bullets in some Kurd to further complicate things for the United States in Iraq.

No, if we felt they were up to something like this, grab 'em.

[He Rides A White Horse]

There was no screw up............what are we going to have, any country waltzing in, killing somebody, then letting the United States deal with the fallout?

[eleni121]

The United States on Sunday released 11 Turkish special forces

The AP has never been able to get it right----Turkish "special forces" = Turkish terrorist goon squads

[marron]

What takes the cake is that the US forces would go on some dubious informant's dubious information and stick themselves.

Any possibility that its true? Don't have any details, other than what I've seen here on FR.

Still, the response seems fairly "robust" on our part, to use the term presently in fashion. I wonder if we are trying to be nasty, at least until Erdogan leaves office. Similarly, we are probably going to be deliberately hard to get along with until Chretien, Chirac, and Schroeder are gone.

But whatever our feelings toward the Turkish government, I thought our relations with the Turkish military at least were pretty good. Are the Turks meddling where they shouldn't? Are we over-reacting to make a point?