My point was that Russia might be stepping up their activity in that region because of the proximity to their own territory; just a gentle reminder to keep off their lawn.
WAR 04-08-2017-to-04-14-2017_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****
My point was that Russia might be stepping up their activity in that region because of the proximity to their own territory; just a gentle reminder to keep off their lawn.
For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://warisboring.com/turkey-eyes-a-military-incursion-into-iraq/
Turkey Eyes a Military Incursion Into Iraq
Erdogan is threatening to go after the PKK in Sinjar
WIB FRONT April 13, 2017 Paul Iddon
Iraq23 Turkey12
Turkey announced the official end of its Euphrates Shield incursion into Syria as March 2017 came to a close. But Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has already suggested that future Turkish operations will “not [only have] a Syrian dimension, [but] also an Iraqi dimension.”
“There are the Tal Afar and Sinjar situations,” Erdogan elaborated. “We also have kin in Mosul.”
Turkey Eyes a Military Incursion Into Iraq
Erdogan is threatening to go after the PKK in Sinjar
Turkey Eyes a Military Incursion Into Iraq
WIB FRONT April 13, 2017 Paul Iddon
Iraq23 Turkey12
Turkey announced the official end of its Euphrates Shield incursion into Syria as March 2017 came to a close. But Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has already suggested that future Turkish operations will “not [only have] a Syrian dimension, [but] also an Iraqi dimension.”
“There are the Tal Afar and Sinjar situations,” Erdogan elaborated. “We also have kin in Mosul.”
ADVERTISING
This isn’t the first time Erdogan has suggested expanding Turkey’s incursion into Syria into parts of Iraq as well. In October 2016, Turkish troops approached the Iraqi border, and Erdogan warned the—predominantly Shia—Hashd Al Shaabi paramilitaries not to harm Sunni Turkmen in Tal Afar.
Turkish Foreign Minister Numan Kurtulmus also demanded that Mosul remain a Sunni Arab-majority city after the Iraqi army defeats the Islamic State.
Erdogan has said on numerous occasions that the Turkish military will occupy Iraq’s Sinjar region if the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, retains a presence there.
“We will go on this [Operation Euphrates Shield] campaign in Syria and Iraq, and now in Kirkuk, Mosul, Tal Afar and Sinjar,” Erdogan declared in October. “Why? Sinjar is about to be the new Qandil [for PKK]. Thus, we cannot allow it to happen in Sinjar, because there is PKK there.”
The PKK, which has fought a guerrilla war against the Turkish state for more than two decades, has maintained an important base of operations in the Qandil Mountains.
Continued U.S. support for the Syrian-Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG, against ISIS, and the deployment of American and Russian troops to the city of Manbij—as well as Russian troops to the northwestern Syrian-Kurdish Afrin Canton—has severely limited Turkey’s ability to confront the YPG.
Turkey achieved its objective of removing ISIS from right across its border. But this means Turkey’s pretext to remain in Syria on security grounds has greatly diminished.
With no option to advance deeper into Syria for the foreseeable future, it makes sense for Ankara to increase pressure on the PKK in Sinjar. The PKK’s continued presence there—established to halt ISIS’s genocidal assault of the Yezidis—is widely opposed by the United States and Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government.
A diplomatic solution is now much more difficult in light of a serious clash between the KRG-backed Rojava Peshmerga forces—an army of Syrian Kurds trained by the KRG who are unable to return home given the opposition of the authorities there—and a PKK-trained Yezidi militia in early March.
The PKK itself seems to believe Turkey is planning an offensive in coordination with the KRG. The Iraq-based Rudaw news agency reported that the PKK is digging tunnels for explosives and mines in preparation for such an attack.
Given Turkey’s many past incursions into Iraqi Kurdistan to attack the PKK—and its frequent air strikes against the PKK in Qandil—such an operation, even with a sizable ground component, would likely prove easier on the political front than any confrontation against the Hashd Al Shaabi in Tal Afar, or anywhere else in Iraq’s northwest Nineveh province.
Relations between Ankara and Baghdad are in much better shape today than they were last year. The two countries had a diplomatic falling out over Turkey’s unauthorized deployment of troops to the Bashiqa training camp near Mosul in late 2015. This culminated in a bitter exchange last October when Erdogan told Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi to “know his place.”
Iraq has since sought to reassure Turkey that the Hashd will not enter Tal Afar, and that Sunni Turkmen have nothing to fear. Unless Hashd paramilitaries launch a unilateral attack on Tal Afar without authorization from Baghdad, Turkey is unlikely to have any sufficient pretext to roll its tanks over the border.
The Islamic State, and Syrian-Kurdish forces in separate incidents, destroyed at least 11 Turkish tanks—aged M-60 Pattons and even tougher Leopard IIs—with anti-tank missiles during Euphrates Shield. Turkey ended that operation after losing 67 of its soldiers and 600 allied Syrian militiamen.
In turn, Turkish troops with air and artillery support killed an estimated 3,000 ISIS fighters.
It’s unclear how costly a Turkish military attack on the PKK in Sinjar may prove, especially if carried out in tandem with an assault on Qandil. Metin Gurcan, a Turkish military specialist, has written recently about the PKK’s increasing anti-tank capabilities, which could pose a formidable threat.
All of Turkey’s past incursions into Iraq focused solely on combating the PKK. Turkey has never sent military forces into Iraq for other reasons, with the exception of its aforementioned deployment to train Sunni-Arab Nineveh Guard militiamen in Bashiqa—and even that was initially established as one of Turkey’s forward operating bases against the PKK in the region back in the 1990s.
Turkey’s largest campaigns against the PKK were operations Steel, Hammer and Dawn during the mid-1990s, and included approximately 30,000 troops each time—with the exception of Operation Dawn in which about half that many troops participated.
None of these operations managed to decisively rout the PKK from its entrenched mountain positions.
Turkey also suffered similar numbers of casualties in these operations—64 soldiers killed in Operation Steel, 114 in Hammer and 31 in Dawn—to Euphrates Shield, a much longer operation which involved far fewer Turkish troops.
Turkey has shied away when the PKK wasn’t involved. During the build-up to the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Ankara made clear it would not function as a second front against the Iraqis. The Western powers handsomely compensated its loss of bilateral trade with Iraq by providing a $9 billion arms package to the Turkish military consisting of hundreds of tanks—600 M-60 Pattons and 400 Leopards along with 700 armored personnel carriers—plus Cobra attack helicopters and F-4 Phantom II fighter-bombers.
Then Turkish Prime Minister Turgut Ozal said the deal made Turkey one of “the most powerful and modern” military powers in the Middle East. Nevertheless, Ankara did not participate in the war against Saddam Hussein and said its deployment of 100,000 troops to the Turkish border with Iraq was enough.
In 2003, the United States hoped Turkey would provide a northern front for the invasion of Iraq. Turkey contemplated sending 40,000 troops into Northern Iraq—who would likely have focused on subduing Kurdish autonomy—but changed course after the parliament voted against it.
The United States consequently focused the invasion from the south. Ankara even forbid the United States from using the strategically important Incirlik Air Base, an issue Turkey has vacillated on for many years now. U.S. Special Forces which landed in Northern Iraq during the invasion did so from staging points in Romania.
Put simply and given the history, a Turkish incursion into Iraq will more likely than not focus on the PKK as its sole target. In other words, it would be business as usual.
Posted for fair use.....
http://warisboring.com/turkey-eyes-a-military-incursion-into-iraq/
Turkey Eyes a Military Incursion Into Iraq
Erdogan is threatening to go after the PKK in Sinjar
WIB FRONT April 13, 2017 Paul Iddon
Iraq23 Turkey12
Turkey announced the official end of its Euphrates Shield incursion into Syria as March 2017 came to a close. But Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has already suggested that future Turkish operations will “not [only have] a Syrian dimension, [but] also an Iraqi dimension.”
“There are the Tal Afar and Sinjar situations,” Erdogan elaborated. “We also have kin in Mosul.”
Turkey Eyes a Military Incursion Into Iraq
Erdogan is threatening to go after the PKK in Sinjar
Turkey Eyes a Military Incursion Into Iraq
WIB FRONT April 13, 2017 Paul Iddon
Iraq23 Turkey12
Turkey announced the official end of its Euphrates Shield incursion into Syria as March 2017 came to a close. But Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has already suggested that future Turkish operations will “not [only have] a Syrian dimension, [but] also an Iraqi dimension.”
“There are the Tal Afar and Sinjar situations,” Erdogan elaborated. “We also have kin in Mosul.”
ADVERTISING
This isn’t the first time Erdogan has suggested expanding Turkey’s incursion into Syria into parts of Iraq as well. In October 2016, Turkish troops approached the Iraqi border, and Erdogan warned the—predominantly Shia—Hashd Al Shaabi paramilitaries not to harm Sunni Turkmen in Tal Afar.
Turkish Foreign Minister Numan Kurtulmus also demanded that Mosul remain a Sunni Arab-majority city after the Iraqi army defeats the Islamic State.
Erdogan has said on numerous occasions that the Turkish military will occupy Iraq’s Sinjar region if the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, retains a presence there.
“We will go on this [Operation Euphrates Shield] campaign in Syria and Iraq, and now in Kirkuk, Mosul, Tal Afar and Sinjar,” Erdogan declared in October. “Why? Sinjar is about to be the new Qandil [for PKK]. Thus, we cannot allow it to happen in Sinjar, because there is PKK there.”
The PKK, which has fought a guerrilla war against the Turkish state for more than two decades, has maintained an important base of operations in the Qandil Mountains.
Continued U.S. support for the Syrian-Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG, against ISIS, and the deployment of American and Russian troops to the city of Manbij—as well as Russian troops to the northwestern Syrian-Kurdish Afrin Canton—has severely limited Turkey’s ability to confront the YPG.
Turkey achieved its objective of removing ISIS from right across its border. But this means Turkey’s pretext to remain in Syria on security grounds has greatly diminished.
With no option to advance deeper into Syria for the foreseeable future, it makes sense for Ankara to increase pressure on the PKK in Sinjar. The PKK’s continued presence there—established to halt ISIS’s genocidal assault of the Yezidis—is widely opposed by the United States and Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government.
A diplomatic solution is now much more difficult in light of a serious clash between the KRG-backed Rojava Peshmerga forces—an army of Syrian Kurds trained by the KRG who are unable to return home given the opposition of the authorities there—and a PKK-trained Yezidi militia in early March.
The PKK itself seems to believe Turkey is planning an offensive in coordination with the KRG. The Iraq-based Rudaw news agency reported that the PKK is digging tunnels for explosives and mines in preparation for such an attack.
Given Turkey’s many past incursions into Iraqi Kurdistan to attack the PKK—and its frequent air strikes against the PKK in Qandil—such an operation, even with a sizable ground component, would likely prove easier on the political front than any confrontation against the Hashd Al Shaabi in Tal Afar, or anywhere else in Iraq’s northwest Nineveh province.
Relations between Ankara and Baghdad are in much better shape today than they were last year. The two countries had a diplomatic falling out over Turkey’s unauthorized deployment of troops to the Bashiqa training camp near Mosul in late 2015. This culminated in a bitter exchange last October when Erdogan told Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi to “know his place.”
Iraq has since sought to reassure Turkey that the Hashd will not enter Tal Afar, and that Sunni Turkmen have nothing to fear. Unless Hashd paramilitaries launch a unilateral attack on Tal Afar without authorization from Baghdad, Turkey is unlikely to have any sufficient pretext to roll its tanks over the border.
The Islamic State, and Syrian-Kurdish forces in separate incidents, destroyed at least 11 Turkish tanks—aged M-60 Pattons and even tougher Leopard IIs—with anti-tank missiles during Euphrates Shield. Turkey ended that operation after losing 67 of its soldiers and 600 allied Syrian militiamen.
In turn, Turkish troops with air and artillery support killed an estimated 3,000 ISIS fighters.
It’s unclear how costly a Turkish military attack on the PKK in Sinjar may prove, especially if carried out in tandem with an assault on Qandil. Metin Gurcan, a Turkish military specialist, has written recently about the PKK’s increasing anti-tank capabilities, which could pose a formidable threat.
All of Turkey’s past incursions into Iraq focused solely on combating the PKK. Turkey has never sent military forces into Iraq for other reasons, with the exception of its aforementioned deployment to train Sunni-Arab Nineveh Guard militiamen in Bashiqa—and even that was initially established as one of Turkey’s forward operating bases against the PKK in the region back in the 1990s.
Turkey’s largest campaigns against the PKK were operations Steel, Hammer and Dawn during the mid-1990s, and included approximately 30,000 troops each time—with the exception of Operation Dawn in which about half that many troops participated.
None of these operations managed to decisively rout the PKK from its entrenched mountain positions.
Turkey also suffered similar numbers of casualties in these operations—64 soldiers killed in Operation Steel, 114 in Hammer and 31 in Dawn—to Euphrates Shield, a much longer operation which involved far fewer Turkish troops.
Turkey has shied away when the PKK wasn’t involved. During the build-up to the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Ankara made clear it would not function as a second front against the Iraqis. The Western powers handsomely compensated its loss of bilateral trade with Iraq by providing a $9 billion arms package to the Turkish military consisting of hundreds of tanks—600 M-60 Pattons and 400 Leopards along with 700 armored personnel carriers—plus Cobra attack helicopters and F-4 Phantom II fighter-bombers.
Then Turkish Prime Minister Turgut Ozal said the deal made Turkey one of “the most powerful and modern” military powers in the Middle East. Nevertheless, Ankara did not participate in the war against Saddam Hussein and said its deployment of 100,000 troops to the Turkish border with Iraq was enough.
In 2003, the United States hoped Turkey would provide a northern front for the invasion of Iraq. Turkey contemplated sending 40,000 troops into Northern Iraq—who would likely have focused on subduing Kurdish autonomy—but changed course after the parliament voted against it.
The United States consequently focused the invasion from the south. Ankara even forbid the United States from using the strategically important Incirlik Air Base, an issue Turkey has vacillated on for many years now. U.S. Special Forces which landed in Northern Iraq during the invasion did so from staging points in Romania.
Put simply and given the history, a Turkish incursion into Iraq will more likely than not focus on the PKK as its sole target. In other words, it would be business as usual.
For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-event-idUSKBN17E2CT
WORLD NEWS | Fri Apr 14, 2017 | 4:46am EDT
China says North Korea tension has to be stopped from reaching 'irreversible' stage
By Dominique Patton and Sue-Lin Wong | BEIJING/PYONGYANG
China said on Friday tension over North Korea had to be stopped from reaching an "irreversible and unmanageable stage" as a U.S. aircraft carrier group steamed towards the region amid fears the North may conduct a sixth nuclear weapons test.
Concerns have grown since the U.S. Navy fired 59 Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian airfield last week in response to a deadly gas attack, raising questions about U.S. President Donald Trump's plans for North Korea, which has conducted missile and nuclear tests in defiance of U.N. and unilateral sanctions.
The United States has warned that a policy of "strategic patience" is over. U.S. Vice President Mike Pence travels to South Korea on Sunday on a long-planned 10-day trip to Asia.
China, North Korea's sole major ally and neighbor which nevertheless opposes its weapons program, has called for talks leading to a peaceful resolution and the decentralization of the Korean peninsula.
"We call on all parties to refrain from provoking and threatening each other, whether in words or actions, and not let the situation get to an irreversible and unmanageable stage," Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told reporters in Beijing.
"Force cannot solve the problem, dialogue can be the only channel to resolve the problem."
North Korea for its part denounced the United States for bringing "huge nuclear strategic assets" to the region.
A spokesman for the North Korean Foreign Ministry's Institute for Disarmament and Peace issued a statement condemning the United States for its attack on the Syrian airfield.
"The U.S. introduces into the Korean peninsula, the world's biggest hotspot, huge nuclear strategic assets, seriously threatening peace and security of the peninsula and pushing the situation there to the brink of a war," the North's KCNA news agency said on Friday, citing the statement.
"This has created a dangerous situation in which a thermo-nuclear war may break out any moment."
North Korea, still technically at war with the South after their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a treaty, has on occasion conducted missile or nuclear tests to coincide with big political events and often threatens the United States, South Korea and Japan.
On Saturday, it marks the "Day of the Sun", the 105th anniversary of the birth of state founder Kim Il Sung.
WITH OR WITHOUT YOU
While Trump has put North Korea on notice that he will not tolerate any more provocation, U.S. officials have said his administration is focusing its strategy on tougher economic sanctions.
Trump said on Thursday North Korea was a problem that "will be taken care of" and he believed Chinese President Xi Jinping would "work very hard" to help resolve it.
Trump has also said the United States is prepared to tackle the crisis without China, if necessary.
He diverted the nuclear-powered USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier and its strike group towards the Korean peninsula last weekend in a show of force. (tmsnrt.rs/2p1yGTQ)
The dollar fell on Friday against a basket of currencies, on track for a losing week as tension over North Korea underpinned the perceived safe-haven Japanese yen.
Media in Japan said the government confirmed it would take all precautions in the face of possible North Korean provocations.
RELATED COVERAGE
Japan discusses how to evacuate citizens from South Korea if crisis hits
Noodles, not nukes: many in South Korea ignore tensions
The Nikkei business daily said government discussions included how to rescue the estimated 57,000 Japanese citizens in South Korea as well as how to cope with a possible flood of North Korean refugees coming to Japan, among whom might be North Korean spies and agents.
In Pyongyang, retired soldier Ho Song Chol told Reuters that North Korea would win should there be any conflict with the United States.
"We don't think about other things, we just live in our belief that we will win as long as our Supreme Leader is with us," Ho said, referring to Kim Jong Un.
Kang Gil-won, a 26-year-old graduate living in Seoul, said his biggest concern was not North Korea, but finding work in a tough job market.
"There’s no concern that war is going to break out tomorrow," he told Reuters at a "study café" where many young job seekers prepare for interviews.
"Getting a job is a war that I feel in my bones."
Many South Koreans, meanwhile, marked "Black Day" on Friday, but it had nothing to do with worry about North Korea.
Black Day is a day for singles, marked by eating "jajangmyeon", a noodle dish topped with a thick sauce made of black beans. It's celebrated by singles as a response to "White Day", an Asian Valentine's Day which falls a month earlier, on March 14.
(Additional reporting by Nick Macfie, James Pearson and Ju-min Park in SEOUL, Natalie Thomas in Pyongyang, Linda Sieg in TOKYO and Michael Martina in BEIJING; Writing by Nick Macfie; Editing by Robert Birsel)
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-event-idUSKBN17E2CT
WORLD NEWS | Fri Apr 14, 2017 | 4:46am EDT
China says North Korea tension has to be stopped from reaching 'irreversible' stage
By Dominique Patton and Sue-Lin Wong | BEIJING/PYONGYANG
China said on Friday tension over North Korea had to be stopped from reaching an "irreversible and unmanageable stage" as a U.S. aircraft carrier group steamed towards the region amid fears the North may conduct a sixth nuclear weapons test.
Concerns have grown since the U.S. Navy fired 59 Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian airfield last week in response to a deadly gas attack, raising questions about U.S. President Donald Trump's plans for North Korea, which has conducted missile and nuclear tests in defiance of U.N. and unilateral sanctions.
The United States has warned that a policy of "strategic patience" is over. U.S. Vice President Mike Pence travels to South Korea on Sunday on a long-planned 10-day trip to Asia.
China, North Korea's sole major ally and neighbor which nevertheless opposes its weapons program, has called for talks leading to a peaceful resolution and the decentralization of the Korean peninsula.
"We call on all parties to refrain from provoking and threatening each other, whether in words or actions, and not let the situation get to an irreversible and unmanageable stage," Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told reporters in Beijing.
"Force cannot solve the problem, dialogue can be the only channel to resolve the problem."
North Korea for its part denounced the United States for bringing "huge nuclear strategic assets" to the region.
A spokesman for the North Korean Foreign Ministry's Institute for Disarmament and Peace issued a statement condemning the United States for its attack on the Syrian airfield.
"The U.S. introduces into the Korean peninsula, the world's biggest hotspot, huge nuclear strategic assets, seriously threatening peace and security of the peninsula and pushing the situation there to the brink of a war," the North's KCNA news agency said on Friday, citing the statement.
"This has created a dangerous situation in which a thermo-nuclear war may break out any moment."
North Korea, still technically at war with the South after their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a treaty, has on occasion conducted missile or nuclear tests to coincide with big political events and often threatens the United States, South Korea and Japan.
On Saturday, it marks the "Day of the Sun", the 105th anniversary of the birth of state founder Kim Il Sung.
WITH OR WITHOUT YOU
While Trump has put North Korea on notice that he will not tolerate any more provocation, U.S. officials have said his administration is focusing its strategy on tougher economic sanctions.
Trump said on Thursday North Korea was a problem that "will be taken care of" and he believed Chinese President Xi Jinping would "work very hard" to help resolve it.
Trump has also said the United States is prepared to tackle the crisis without China, if necessary.
He diverted the nuclear-powered USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier and its strike group towards the Korean peninsula last weekend in a show of force. (tmsnrt.rs/2p1yGTQ)
The dollar fell on Friday against a basket of currencies, on track for a losing week as tension over North Korea underpinned the perceived safe-haven Japanese yen.
Media in Japan said the government confirmed it would take all precautions in the face of possible North Korean provocations.
RELATED COVERAGE
Japan discusses how to evacuate citizens from South Korea if crisis hits
Noodles, not nukes: many in South Korea ignore tensions
The Nikkei business daily said government discussions included how to rescue the estimated 57,000 Japanese citizens in South Korea as well as how to cope with a possible flood of North Korean refugees coming to Japan, among whom might be North Korean spies and agents.
In Pyongyang, retired soldier Ho Song Chol told Reuters that North Korea would win should there be any conflict with the United States.
"We don't think about other things, we just live in our belief that we will win as long as our Supreme Leader is with us," Ho said, referring to Kim Jong Un.
Kang Gil-won, a 26-year-old graduate living in Seoul, said his biggest concern was not North Korea, but finding work in a tough job market.
"There’s no concern that war is going to break out tomorrow," he told Reuters at a "study café" where many young job seekers prepare for interviews.
"Getting a job is a war that I feel in my bones."
Many South Koreans, meanwhile, marked "Black Day" on Friday, but it had nothing to do with worry about North Korea.
Black Day is a day for singles, marked by eating "jajangmyeon", a noodle dish topped with a thick sauce made of black beans. It's celebrated by singles as a response to "White Day", an Asian Valentine's Day which falls a month earlier, on March 14.
(Additional reporting by Nick Macfie, James Pearson and Ju-min Park in SEOUL, Natalie Thomas in Pyongyang, Linda Sieg in TOKYO and Michael Martina in BEIJING; Writing by Nick Macfie; Editing by Robert Birsel)