TIME: The Turks Enter
Iraq
Thursday, April 24, 2003
By MICHAEL WARE
Even as the U.S. works to stabilize a postwar Iraq,
Turkey is setting out to create a footprint of its
own in the Kurdish areas of the country. In the days
after U.S. forces captured Saddam's powerbase in
Tikrit, a dozen Turkish Special Forces troops were
dispatched south from Turkey. Their target: the
northern oil city of Kirkuk, now controlled by the
U.S. 173rd Airborne Division's 3rd Brigade. Using the
pretext of accompanying humanitarian aid the elite
soldiers passed through the northern city of Arbil on
Tuesday. They wore civilian clothes, their vehicles
lagging behind a legitimate aid convoy. They'd hoped
to pass unnoticed. But at a checkpoint on the
outskirts of Kirkuk they ran into trouble. "We were
waiting for them," says a U.S. paratroop officer.
The Turkish Special Forces team put up no resistance
though a mean arsenal was discovered in their cars,
including a variety of AK-47s, M4s, grenades, body
armor and night vision goggles. "They did not come
here with a pure heart," says U.S. brigade commander
Col. Bill Mayville. "Their objective is to create an
environment that can be used by Turkey to send a
large peacekeeping force into Kirkuk."
The presence of the Turkish soldiers highlights the
increasing possibilities of instability in the
region, which has a sizable Turkoman population that
has clashed with the Kurdish majority since the
collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime. In the first
days after Kirkuk fell to allied forces on April
10th, Turkoman families and political parties were
attacked by bands of Kurdish looters. In a dramatic
display on April 11, an enraged group of Turkoman men
dumped the body of a small boy, perhaps seven or
eight years old, in front of the Daralsalum Hotel
where international journalists had taken rooms. He'd
been shot through the waist at close range by a PK
light machine gun. The 7.62mm round travelled up
through his torso and exited through his skull,
leaving a hollowed shell where his little head was
supposed to be.
American commanders in the city believe the covert
Turkish team was meant to inflame these kind of
tensions. "These [Turkish] forces are tied in to
Turkoman groups in the city," says Col Mayville. The
173rd Airborne commanders suspect an amalgam of local
Turkoman parties under the banner of the Iraqi
Turkoman Front (ITF) were to be used by the covert
team to wreak havoc. "In this first convoy was real
aid. They'd do this two or three times then money or
weapons would have started flowing in. We suspect
their role was to strongarm or discipline the members
of the ITF. What they're doing is crystallizing the
ITF along the Turkish agenda," says Col. Mayville.
By Wednesday U.S. paratroopers were holding 23 people
associated with the Turkish Special Forces team. Some
were drivers and aid workers. But a dozen of them,
says Col. Mayville, were identified as soldiers. "We
held them for a night, brought them in, fed them and
watched their security. After all," he says wryly,
"they are our allies." Early Thursday morning
American troops escorted the Turkish commandos back
over the border.