Turkey authorizes push into Iraq

WASHINGTON - Turkey's parliament voted overwhelmingly yesterday to authorize the nation's military forces to invade northern Iraq to hunt for Kurdish rebels.

The move follows a spate of rebel attacks in Turkey and rising Turkish anger over a proposed resolution in Congress that labels the World War I era killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks as genocide. Turkey's action ratchets up the pressure on US and Iraqi forces to rein in the rebels, who have attacked Turkey from bases in Iraq with relative impunity since 2004.

The move greatly complicates the US military effort in Iraq, where American forces have focused on fighting Sunni insurgents and Shi'ite militias and have few resources left to confront Kurdish rebels based in the relatively stable northern part of the country. Turkish leaders, who met yesterday with Iraq's Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi in an attempt to defuse the crisis, said they have no immediate plans for military action.

President Bush and NATO and Euro pean Union officials yesterday called on Turkey to exercise restraint. At a news conference, Bush hinted that a Turkish invasion could harm the struggle to bring order to Iraq. While Iraq and the United States share Turkey's concerns, Bush said, "There's a better way to deal with the issue than having the Turks send massive additional troops into the country."

Amid growing concern over Turkey's plans, Democratic leaders in Congress have been backing away from pledges to vote on the nonbinding resolution, championed by Democrats with large Armenian-American constituencies who have long sought official US recognition that the World War I era killings constituted genocide.

Turkish officials have been outraged by the prospect of such a gesture and promised to retaliate against the United States if Congress pressed ahead with the vote. Ankara's stance, with heavy popular support among Turks, prompted Bush and his top aides in recent days to intensify pressure on members of Congress to withdraw their support, fearing that Turkey would revoke permission to use a Turkish air base that brings fuel and supplies to US soldiers in Iraq.

Representative Adam Schiff, a California Democrat who initiated the resolution, said so many members have dropped their support that the fate of the measure, which once had 225 cosponsors, is now in question. Schiff said he hopes to know by the end of the week whether the measure has enough support to go forward, and that he will then report to the Democratic leadership, who will decide whether or not to call a floor vote.

Schiff said he would be reluctant to go forward without enough votes, for fear that Turkey will assert any unsuccessful vote "is a vote in favor of denial" of the genocide. But the measure continues to enjoy strong support from the delegation from Massachusetts, home to some 50,000 Armenian-Americans.

"I don't think any Massachusetts congressman has swayed," said Representative Edward J. Markey, a Malden Democrat. "I don't think we should let Turkey bully the United States Congress."

Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Newton, said he doubted Turkey would make good on its threats. "It's important to commemorate genocides that have happened as a way of trying to diminish the likelihood of them occurring again," he said.

But analysts said the pending resolution in Congress had hampered US efforts to dissuade Turkey from authorizing a large-scale military action on the Kurdish separatists, known as the Kurdish Workers' Party or the PKK, a group of extremists from the ethnic Kurdish minority in Turkey who have waged a war against the Turkish government since 1984.

Throughout the 1990s, Turkish forces launched major military campaigns against PKK bases in Kurdish areas of northern Iraq, killing tens of thousands of people.

In 1999, after the capture of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, the group declared a unilateral cease-fire and peace returned to the area. But in 2004, after the US-led invasion of Iraq, the violent movement sprung up again and gained support among Iraqi Kurds, many of whom share the PKK's dream of an independent Kurdish state.

Mark R. Parris, a former US ambassador to Turkey, said that, in the 1990s, Iraqi Kurdish leaders cooperated closely with Turkey to stamp out the PKK. Relations between Turkey and Iraqi Kurdish leaders were so good that Massoud Barzani, one of the most powerful men in Iraqi Kurdistan, once traveled on a Turkish diplomatic passport, he said.

But since 2004, Barzani - now the head of the semi-autonomous Kurdish Regional Government in Iraq - has not taken the potentially unpopular action of trying to rein in the PKK.

"Clearly, he has chosen not to move against them," Parris said. Yesterday Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki called Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to promise that his fledgling Baghdad government would move against the PKK in Iraq.

For the past 2 1/2 years, Turkey has complained about the cross-border attacks to US officials in Washington.

But yesterday, Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell acknowledged that the PKK is low priority for US troops, which he said have their "hands full" with dealing with Al Qaeda in Iraq and radical elements of the Shi'ite militia known as the Mahdi Army.

"There's only so much you can do at one time," Morrell said. "The Kurdish Regional Government has a sizable military component and they have the means, we believe, to address this problem. Hopefully they can address it by exerting their influence over members of the PKK and that it doesn't require military action on the part of Turkey."

Turkey has kept a modest presence of special forces soldiers in northern Iraq, but the vote gives its military "a blank check to order a much larger operation" over the coming year, said Ian Lesser, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a Washington-based think tank.

Analysts said Turkey was unlikely to act soon. Early next month, Turkish officials are scheduled to host a regional summit of Iraq's neighbors and Erdogan is slated to visit Bush at the White House. Military action would strain those diplomatic efforts.

But if Iraqi and US officials don't follow through with promises to contain the PKK, analysts said, Turkey could lose patience and invade northern Iraq to set up a buffer zone or a security cordon similar to what Israel did in southern Lebanon. Such a move would imperil one area in Iraq known for its relative peace and economic prosperity.

"It could trigger a much larger confrontation with Kurdish forces," Lesser said. "It could, in the worst case, bring Turkish forces into contact with US advisers who are involved with the [Kurdish Regional Government's troops] . . . Unless this is done with some level of cooperation with the United States, it involves a lot of risks for both sides."