"Waving colourful banners and Kurdish flags, thousands of people demonstrated across northern Iraq today in protest at the growing threat of a big military incursion by Turkey to hunt down Kurdish rebels", the October 18 London Times reported.
The protests — numbering at least 10,000 people in Irbil and more than 5000 in Dohuk — took place as the pro-US leaders of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish regional government (KRG) met to respond to a decision by the Turkish parliament the previous day to authorise strikes by Turkish troops across the mountainous border that divides the two countries to crush the rebel Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
Turkey, a member of the US-led NATO alliance, has at least 60,000 troops deployed on Iraq's northern border.
On October 19, the BBC quoted KRG President Massoud Barzani as saying: "We frankly say to all parties: if they attack the region of Kurdistan under whatever pretext, we will be completely ready to defend our democratic experiment and the dignity of our people and the sanctity of our homeland."
The PKK has an estimated 3500 guerrilla fighters in numerous camps in the mountains above Irbil, the capital of the Iraqi Kurdistan region, and further south, above the region's second city, Sulaymaniyah, and it enjoys widespread sympathy among Iraq's 4-5 million Kurds.
Categorised as a "terrorist" organisation by Ankara, Washington and the European Union, the PKK has been fighting since 1984 in south-eastern Turkey for an independent Kurdish nation-state that would cover the Kurdish-majority areas of Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria, inhabited by at least 30 million Kurds.
Following the establishment of the Turkish republic in 1923, its rulers have refused to recognise the Kurds within its borders as a national minority, classifying them as "mountain Turks". In 1983, Turkey banned the public use of the Kurdish language, the native tongue of 20% of Turkey's 70 million-strong population.
It is estimated that around 37,000 people have been killed in the conflict between the PKK and Ankara, most of them due to Turkish miliary operations. According to a 2005 study by the New York-based Human Rights Watch group, "During the course of such operations, security forces frequently abused and humiliated [Kurdish] villagers, stole their property and cash, and ill-treated or tortured them before herding them onto the roads and away from their former homes. The operations were marked by scores of 'disappearances' and extrajudicial executions. By the mid-1990s, more than 3000 villages had been virtually wiped from the map, and, according to official figures, 378,335 Kurdish villagers had been displaced and left homeless."
Throughout the 1990s, Turkish forces launched major military campaigns against PKK bases in Iraqi Kurdistan, killing tens of thousands of people. In 1999, the PKK's guerrillas declared a five-year ceasefire, but Ankara refused to reciprocate.
Over the past year there have been repeated Iraqi media reports of meetings between US officials and PKK representatives, particularly since the PKK-initiated Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK), a Iranian-oriented Kurdish organisation, began carrying out ambushes against Iranian security forces from its bases in Iraqi Kurdistan.
In November 2006, US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported in the New Yorker magazine that the US and Israel were secretly giving PJAK fighters equipment, training, and targeting information in order to "destabilise" Iran.
Hersh reported that Cemil "Cuma" Bayik, a founder of the PKK, had told him: "If the US is interested in PJAK, then it has to be interested in the PKK as well. The PKK is the one who formed PJAK, who established PJAK and supports PJAK."
PJAK president Rahman Haj-Ahmadi visited Washington this August. He told the August 4 Washington Times: "We obviously cannot topple the [Iranian] government with the ammunition and the weapons we have now. Any financial or military help that would speed the path to a true Iranian democracy, we would very much welcome, particularly from the United States."
Haj-Ahmadi also said: "Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says he is waiting for the badieh zaman [the legendary 12th imam of Shia Islam whose return will bring justice to the world]. We also believe in the badieh zaman. For us, he is George W. Bush."
Biryar Gabar, a top PJAK commander, told the September 13 Newsweek that Haj-Ahmadi's US meetings were "at a high level" and involved discussions about "the future of Iran". But US officials denied there had been any meetings with the PJAK delegation.
The October 22 International Herald Tribune reported that PJAK leaders had told it their fighters had killed 108 Iranian soldiers and government officials inside Iran in August, and another 150 since then.
Over the last three years, the Turkish government has repeatedly demanded that Washington crush the PKK forces in Iraqi Kurdistan. But these demands have been ignored, generating increasing anger within the Turkish political elite, which could jeopardise the US counterinsurgency war in Iraq. Seventy per cent of all US air cargo bound for Iraq passes through a US air base in southern Turkey.
In recent weeks, US officials and their puppet government in Baghdad have urged the KRG, which controls its own 100,000-strong Peshmerga militia, to detain PKK fighters based on its territory and deport them to Turkey. But because of widespread sympathy for the PKK among Iraq's Kurdish population, the KRG has refused to do so.
Aljeezera reported on October 22 that Barzani told a press conference in the Iraqi Kurdish city of Sulaymaniyah that the "idea of PKK leaders being turned over to Turkey is a dream that will never be realised".
Following an October 21 PKK attack on a Turkish border patrol that resulted in 17 Turkish soldiers being killed and eight being captured, Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan told the next day's London Times that a "serious wave of anti-Americanism" was sweeping his country because of Washington's refusal to close the PKK's bases in Iraqi Kurdistan. He said that it was widely believed in Turkey that the PKK was being protected by the US and Iraqi governments and that the PKK was using "American weapons".
Erdogan said that he had told US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in a phone conversation the previous night that Ankara expected "speedy steps" from Washington in cracking down on the PKK "terrorists".
The October 22 Los Angeles Times however reported that General David Petraeus, the top US commander in Iraq, "has reportedly opposed diverting American troops 'surging' in Iraq to a probably fruitless campaign to roust PKK guerrillas who have been dug in for decades among a supportive population in some of the Middle East's most rugged territory".
That same day, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, himself a Kurd, told reporters at Sulaimaniyah airport that the PKK would implement a unilateral ceasefire from the evening of October 22.
Xinhua reported from Baghdad that PKK spokesperson Abid al rahman Aljadarje had told the Chinese news agency: "I can confirm that our group will observe a unilateral ceasefire as of this evening." However, he added, "The ceasefire will be an open-ended one as long as Turkish troops exercise restraint. If they attack us, then we will defend ourselves."
Also on October 22, the PKK posted a statement on its website offering to end its armed struggle and seek a negotiated solution to its dispute with Ankara. "If Turkey stops attacking us, the battle will stop and we will start the peace process. We are ready to start dialogue and we are ready to join the political process if Turkey gives us the chance."
US State Department spokesperson Sean McCormack rejected this call, telling reporters: "Our view is that the PKK is a terrorist organisation; you can't negotiate with a terrorist organisation."
Turkish foreign minister Ali Babacan concurred: "A ceasefire is a term which is used between two countries or two regular armies. The problem we are facing here is a problem of terrorism", he told reporters while visiting Baghdad on October 23.
That day's Chicago Tribune reported that the "Bush administration is considering air strikes against the Kurdish rebel group PKK in northern Iraq in an attempt to stave off a Turkish invasion of Iraq to fight the rebels, administration officials said".
KRG spokesperson Qubad Talabani told the Tribune: "If the US starts bombing PKK camps in the north of Iraq, Turkey will be ablaze tomorrow", because such air strikes would ignite anger among the millions of Kurds living in Turkey.
While Talabani didn't say it, US air strikes on the PKK camps in Iraqi Kurdistan could also generate strong anti-US sentiment among the millions of Iraqi Kurds, endangering the KRG's political support for the US occupation of Iraq.