A Place to Stand

Considering that the Iraq war is so important to the US & UK I find it surprising, even by my cynical standards, to find our media not mentioning Turkish soldiers invading Iraq. I had to get this from Asia Times.

Turkey recently launched a massive military operation involving more than 250,000 troops against the PKK (nearly double the number of US troops in Iraq), concentrated in the mountains along Turkey's borders with Iran and Iraq. Extensive incursions into northern Iraq have been reported, aimed at cutting off the PKK's supply lines to Turkey from its camps in northern Iraq. Turkey also claims that "the PKK has recently increased its activities and obtained weapons from Iraq"......

To be fair it isn't a full scale invasion it is being termed "hot pursuit". This is the one case where it is lawful to breach the otherwise inviolable sovereignty of another country. If you are in immediate pursuit of terrorists or criminals crossing a border you may lawfully do the same. It is however a grey are. Yugoslavia could lawfully have done this repeatedly to chase the KLA into Albania but we all know NATO would just have used it as an excuse for war - it certainly wouldn't have gone unmentioned by our media. In any case it only applies if it is immediate pursuit & what Turkey is doing looks much more like planned & extended operations.

It is a good thing that we now have access to all the world's media not just our own. At the least it gives perspective.