About 300 Turkish troops crossed the border at 3 a.m., said Jamal Abdullah, a spokesman for the regional Kurdistan government. He said the region was a deserted mountainous frontier area.
(From an Article posted by catwoman)

Why would only 300 men from Turkish Special Forces suddenly appear in the middle of nowhere, at 3 AM?

1. They like solitude in night walks and avoid crowds, when possible.
2. They were either drunk or lost: Nobody really knows.
3. Somebody warned them that terrorists were gathering in that area. They went out to welcome them.
4. They will not stop there. Their intention is to show the world 300 Turks are enough to capture all of Iraq.

5. Someone in Northern Iraq insulted Turkishness

6. They are looking for Quinoa

Nooo...Nobody in Northern Iraq would even imagine insulting Turks..)))))))))))))

Elisabeth...

The border between Turkia and Iraq is a stupid unnatural border, drawn by some drunk greedy Brit: His single concern was to keep the oil on the Iraq side, which he believed would be easier to control. No human concerns were involved at all.

As such, family lands and families are divided into two, one brother on Turkish, the other on Iraq side.

Now tell me why should two brothers curse each other, just because they were condemned to live on different sides of a border?

When it comes to oil....you guys have all the answers ))))))))))

I only have the correct answers...

Why would only 300 men from Turkish Special Forces suddenly appear in the middle of nowhere, at 3 AM?

Maybe they watched 300 Spartians on dvd

War sux.... My friend is down there,I'm praying for the porr boys every day/night

because a yanicar values at least 1000 other man.
he is brave spadasin, huge kocaman. usually of hungarian origin.

Not, if you are reasonable.....

QUESTION
Turkia could have managed the recent operation with 1/4 the aircraft Turks used. Why the the huge extravaganza?

Better yet, put the 300 soldiers who crossed the borders to work and help their neighbor..

For anyone who has questions regarding the PKK....

"The PKK - which is designated a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the US, and the EU - is thought to have about 3,000 rebels based in Iraq."

PKK

Alameda, I would have preferred a Wikipedia link.. :-S

After all the things ahppened in the world, some countries have sympathy on PKK , then now i m having sympathy on IRA, ETA and El_kaide too.. whats the big deal.. they are all the same and should be in the same basket..
If PKK is not seen as terroirst group then others dont deserve it too

Correct....Terrorists are same in principle.

You cant have "bad" terrorists bombing your cities and "good"terrorists bombing cities of others...

good terrorists? :S

Yes, PKK is a terrorist organization. But why do Kurdish kids choose to be a rebel on the mountains and to die? And why thousands of people supported DTP, a political party affiliated with PKK? That means there is something wrong in that part of Turkey that makes Kurdish kids terrorists and that is why people support that political party. It is not simple security problem. Turkey should solve the problems through social and economic reforms. Only then, the attacks against rebels will be legitimate.

Pardon, how is DTP affiliated with PKK? :-S

They rebel because they still, as we are approaching 2008, feel deprived of rights. The reason why a few of them chose to do it violently is probably (and sadly) that they constantly see that political attempts are a no win.
DTP is the how-manieth kurdish party they want to close now?
We surely need reforms that ensures democracy for everyone in Turkey and better education so that no one will want to (or feel the need to) join PKK in the future.

Why do people become terrorists?

October 24, 2003
The New York Times
Kurds Are Finally Heard: Turkey Burned Our Villages
By DEXTER FILKINS
One after another, the villagers stepped forward in their tattered clothes, took the courtroom oath and spoke of a previously unutterable crimes.

One of the first was Emine Toprak, an elderly Kurdish woman whose cracked and withered face hinted at her story to come.

''I was sitting in the house with my children, and they came and said we are going to burn your house, and so we got out,'' Ms. Toprak told a row of silk-robbed Turkish judges seated before her.

''Who burned your village?'' one of the Turkish judges asked.

''The government forces,'' Ms. Toprak answered.

So it was in a third-floor Turkish courtroom last week that a handful of Kurdish villagers broke the silence that has prevailed in this country over what human rights groups here say was one of the most violent secrets of the 1990's: the systematic campaign by Turkish security forces to burn down villages of Kurds suspected of harboring separatist guerrillas.

Turkish policy toward the Kurds has since become conciliatory. But the courtroom scene was a powerful reminder of how much bad history hangs over Turkish plans -- initially encouraged by the Bush administration -- to deploy troops in Iraq, where four to five million Kurds live in the northern part of the country.

Human rights groups here say Turkish security forces destroyed as many as 4,000 villages and hamlets and displaced hundreds of thousands of Kurds. The villages were burned during the ferocious war between the Turkish government and Kurdish rebels. More than 30,000 people died.

But until last week, according to Kurdish lawyers, the scorched-earth practices of the Turkish government were too sensitive a topic to speak about in Turkey itself. Claiming that Turkish forces had burned a Kurdish village, they said, was often tantamount to a death sentence.

Kurdish people who filed claims for their burned homes often disappeared, said Selhattin Demirtas, the chairman of the Human Rights Association of Diyarbakir, as did, sometimes, the lawyers themselves.

Nusret Miroglu, the governor of Diyarbakir, denied the accusations. ''The Turkish army does not burn villages -- this is a lie,'' he said ''We are a country of laws.''

''It is quite possible,'' Governor Miroglu continued, ''that the terrorists burned this village.'' He was referring to Kurdish rebels.

The climate between the Turks and Kurds has changed sharply in recent months, as the country's leaders have eagerly pushed for entry into the European Union. At the insistence of the Union, the Turkish government has enacted measures to expand the rights of its 14 million Kurds, who have long been denied the legal and cultural freedoms enjoyed by other Turkish citizens.

Since last year, the Turkish Parliament has passed laws allowing Kurdish parents to give their children Kurdish names, Kurdish teachers to hold classes on the Kurdish language, and Kurdish broadcasters to set up their own television station. Earlier this year, the government lifted emergency rule in the areas where it remained in the southeastern part of the country.

The changing relationship between the Turkish government and its Kurdish subjects was evident in the very fact that the court hearings took place. ''What you saw today could never have happened four years ago,'' Meral Bestas, a Kurdish lawyer, said after last week's court hearing. ''People were too afraid.''

But the new Turkish policy extends only so far. Despite the testimony of 20 villagers, each of whom told much the same story, the judge in the case, Mithat Ozcakmaktasi, ruled that more time was needed for a verdict.

The story, as recounted by the villagers, began on March 6, 1993. The troops of the Uzman Jandarma, a paramilitary force active in the region, entered Derecik at around midday and told the occupants of about half of the village to leave their homes immediately.

Once the villagers had filed out, the troops began pouring what some villagers described as a flammable powder, perhaps phosphorous, onto the wooden roofs and furniture inside.

''The men from the Jandarma came to my house and told me to get out,'' Omer Fidan, a 56-year-old fruit farmer, told the judges.

Someone struck a match, he said, and 28 homes went up in flames.

Mr. Fidan, a proud but haggard-looking man, said he managed to gather a few of his sheep before his home disappeared in the flames. Then he piled his wife and 10 children into a flatbed truck and drove them toward a new life in Diyarbakir.

''I would not wish on anyone what I went through that day,'' Mr. Fidan said in a quiet moment after the court hearing.

By many accounts here, burning villages was part of a Turkish strategy to deprive the rebels of sanctuary. It was true, Mr. Fidan said, that Derecik's villagers often gave food to the guerrillas when they came through.

Two years ago, a Turkish parliamentary commission concluded that more than 3,000 villages had been destroyed and some 378,000 people displaced. But the commission reached no conclusions about who had set the villages afire.

It is still not easy to uncover the details of what happened in Derecik, situated 50 miles northeast of Diyarbakir, as it remains closed to outsiders. An American reporter who tried to go there last week was detained at a military checkpoint, ordered to turn around and followed for several miles by Turkish intelligence agents.

Along the way, wreckage abounded from the war that once raged. On the roadside, some 30 miles outside Diyarbakir, stood the remains of what had once been a small village: piles of old bricks, charred wood and a few pieces of rusty furniture.

A road sign, still standing, announced its name: Angul.

''The military came and said get out, and we got out, and then they threw some powder onto the house, and suddenly we saw that our house was on fire,'' said Cicek Dagtas, a native of Angul.

Ms. Dagtas and her husband, Hussein, now make up Angul's entire population. After living a decade in an apartment in Diyarbakir, they returned two months ago to start again. They were found on a roof of the village school, one of two intact buildings, trying to repair the roof.

''We couldn't stand the life in the city, and we decided to come back,'' Mr. Dagtas said.

Not far away stands the remains of Fis Restaurant, the very place where, in 1978, Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the main Kurdish guerrilla group, called his first meeting. The restaurant is closed now, its walls blackened and charred.

Mr. Ocalan himself was captured in 1999, and since then, his group, the Kurdish Workers' Party, has drastically scaled back its operations.

It was only through great persistence that Mr. Fidan, the Derecik fruit farmer, and the others were able to tell their story at all. Consumed by his loss, Mr. Fidan reported the torching to the police and, waving away warnings from friends, demanded compensation. He got nowhere. Eight years later, he said, he decided to sue the government.

The suit, taken up by the president of the Diyarbakir Bar Association and three other lawyers, led to countercharges from prosecutors that the lawyers had made up the story. The prosecutors charged each of them with abusing their legal responsibilities, a felony under Turkish law.

''The villages in the province were not set on fire and destroyed by the security forces,'' the government's indictment read.

Sezgin Tanrikulu, the president of the bar association, said he was not surprised. Detained several times by the security forces himself, Mr. Tanrikulu said he planned to call witnesses like Mr. Fidan to contest the government's charges.

And so the villagers, one by one, took the stand.

When it was over, Judge Ozcakmaktasi said he would hold another hearing on Dec. 4, possibly to make a decision.

''I have been a very patient man,'' Mr. Fidan said.

kadder,
nice.. so people become terrorists when they begin looking and fighting for their rights? whether there is a problem with the definition of the concept "terrorism" or u still dont wanna notice what u have quoted and the term terrorism dont suit together.
who are the innocent humans if these are the terrorists??

Dear hairiest, I am sending flowers to all ideas that are part of the answer!!!

What are the Palestinians supposed to do when their land was simply sold?

The Islamic killers thrive on the Palestinian situation. As long as the Palestinians are denied a state of their own, the propaganda machine that demonizes Israel will roll along unchallenged in the Arab world.

So the only way to break down the hatred many Arabs have toward Israel is to forge a Palestinian-Israeli peace agreement that both sides can live with.

In order for Israel to cooperate in this effort fully, it needs to feel secure.

There are around the world thousands of Islamic fanatics who want to kill Israelis/Americans because they believe Allah is down with that.

These people are taught from the time they are children that Jews and Americans are undeserving of life on this planet.

There is no negotiation with the most of these zealots; there is nothing one can say to dissuade them.

They want blood and they will use any and all means to get it.

A number of nations help these killers and allow the murderous anti-American anti=Jews indoctrination to continue generation after generation.

So unless these generations are taught by their parents and peers a different mind set, the fighting will continue.

And why was it given to them?
Nobody can just give land away that's a very strange policy.

Before when? Over some 3000 years ago?

I understand that religious jews wanted to return to their roots but why not just go and settle there, did they absolutely have to declare their own country? There were people living there already

The Palestine problem became an international issue towards the end of the First World War with the disintegration of the Turkish Ottoman Empire. So ultimately Turkeys to blame!

Here is a little history...
Between 3000 and 1100 B.C., Canaanite civilization covered what is today Israel, the West Bank, Lebanon and much of Syria and Jordan...Those who remained in the Jerusalem hills after the Romans expelled the Jews [in the second century A.D.] were a potpourri: farmers and vineyard growers, pagans and converts to Christianity, descendants of the Arabs, Persians, Samaritans, Greeks and old Canaanite tribes.” Marcia Kunstel and Joseph Albright, “Their Promised Land.”

first of all dearest femmes questions requires some answers:

do me a favor, learn about the palestine/israel.

whats the situation in palestine?
--who is accupying whos land, who is killing who -I gave some values in a thread earlier. from those it is so obvious, israel KILLED MORE CHILDREN and CIVILIANS

why dont palestinians think about their country?
--which country? do they have a country? who is not accepting the peace plans? who keeps refusing UN resolutions? who keeps stealing the palestinian lands? (a little quote here-"Everybody has to move, run and grab as many hilltops as they can to enlarge the settlements because everything we take now will stay ours... Everything we don't grab will go to them." Ariel Sharon)

why dont they build schools, hospitals, factories etc etc?
--most of them are constantly being destroyed by israel. Actually it has been Israel's intention to have the Palestinian Authority collapse sistematically.

why dont they at least try to rebuild, try to go on?
--see above

what good of resistance they have?
--they have NOTHING there to lose right now. Thinking that Israel will give their land peacefully is a bit naive!

they should stop thinking of revenge but think of their future.
--their future is being blocked by the right wing sionist governments.


==========================
I wanted it to be deleted because this thread will be heated up and again you will start getting cross as it happened before

You have to have a strong stomach to support CIVILIAN/CHILD KILLERS - - it is not everybody's cup of tea.
Or really and trully you have no idea what is going on palestine.

arabs and jews living together peacfully?
a recent survey for you (replies from jews people):
* 75% would not agree to live in a building with Arab residents.
* More than 60% wouldn't accept any Arab visitors at their homes.
* About 40% agree upon taking the right to vote from Arabs.
* More than 50% agree that the State should encourage immigration of Arab citizens to other states.
* More than 59% think that the culture of Arabs is a primitive culture.

whos land, sorry!!
(OMG she must be joking!! )
The Jews took Israel from the Arabs after the Arabs had lived there for a thousand years.
Even every israeli knows that!!

on whos land again? who is confiscating whos land?
aaaaa..(Ok I got it..this is a dream, a huge joke!! she will suddenly say that she has been kidding)
Forget the history, any geography knowledge, a bit, tiny bit?crying out loud here!!
Here are the maps for the land israel keeps stealing with force:
map
map
and the un resolution

Well,
Still supporting Israel?
I will give the numbers I have given before :
(Death toll since 200
119 israeli to 971 palestinians (childeren)
700 israeli to 2000 plastinians (civilians)
I will conclude what I wrote above:
Supporting israel is not everybody's cup of tea.

another a little piece from me.
when brits had the land, it was empty, there were no significant cities (except for jerusalem) nothing grew.
the population was not comparable to what today is.

there was no nation called palestinians.
over one night arabs from transjordania became palestinians.

arabs thought they would easily wipe out jews, so they attempted countless.

never worked!

You may not realize the symbolism of Jerusalem and the New Testament in the Bible. The Crucifixion Of Jesus and the Jews. However, most Jewish people don't acknowledge the New Testament, but they do believe in the Old Testament.
That's how far back the Jewish people occupied what is now Israel.

This is why it's so crazy to me, this historical, spirtual place and at the same time so much hate.

John Pilger - Palestine Is Still The Issue
john pilger
Please watch all of them!!

Here's little something I have to share with you guys: Israel, Palestine, Britain. Watch all seven parts.

The Balfour Declaration promises a Jewish Homeland in Palestine.
“The Balfour Declaration, made in November 1917 by the British Government...was made a) by a European power, b) about a non-European territory, c) in flat disregard of both the presence and wishes of the native majority resident in that territory...[As Balfour himself wrote in 1919], ‘The contradiction between the letter of the Covenant (the Anglo French Declaration of 1918 promising the Arabs of the former Ottoman colonies that as a reward for supporting the Allies they could have their independence) is even more flagrant in the case of the independent nation of Palestine than in that of the independent nation of Syria. For in Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country...The four powers are committed to Zionism and Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long tradition, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desire and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land,’” Edward Said, “The Question of Palestine.”

how come jews allow arabs to live in israel not threatening their lives?
why dont they kill them all off? nobody would know.
nope, they are a single democracy in the middle east!
and arabs want to destroy the democracy.

all the jews work hard paying enourmous taxes, while arabs dont work living on benefits, many arab women are registered as lonely mothers and receive benefits.
but jews arent saying anything, they keep feeding lazy arabs for the sake of false peace.

so whatever jews do is wrong! and the jews themselves are a historical mistake


why do the palestinians go to work to israel? why dont they have employment in their own land?
why do they go to israeli hospitals?

couldnt OILY brothers help the poor brother to stand up economically?
oh, yeah, they do indeed help (not only arabs help them, but they have loads of international dotations), the oily brothers send them kalashnikovs, bullets, weapons!

what a disaster!

israeli war crimes/Geneva conventions
Article 54.-Protection of objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population
1. Starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is prohibited.
Israel has been blocking plestinian territories for a long time.
(red cross)
(power cuts to gazza)
(what was hapening 7 years ago )

2. It is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, such as foodstuffs, agricultural areas for the production of foodstuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies and irrigation works, for the specific purpose of denying them for their sustenance value to the civilian population or to the adverse Party, whatever the motive, whether in order to starve out civilians, to cause them to move away, or for any other motive.
(israel destroys power plant in gazza)
( destroying the Palestinian dream of a state)
(Amnesty International has accused Israel of committing war crimes by deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure in Lebanon.)
The human rights group (Amnesty International) says attacks on homes, bridges, roads and water and fuel plants were an "integral part" of Israel's strategy in the recent war.

more link is necessary to prove that israel is in breach of this article?

Article 51.-Protection of the civilian population
2. The civilian population as such, as well as individual civilians, shall not be the object of attack. Acts or threats of violence the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population are prohibited.
Gaza killings

(Israeli army 'crimes')
(killing a 13-year-old girl)
(10 Palestinians, including a number of children)
you might get 100's of links actually to show that Israel is clearly violating this article.
What Israeli army is doing does not look like the act of state more like the act of a gang!!
etc etc etc
..............

If all above do not constitute to war crimes and "crime against humanity" what else do we need?
What is "crime against humanity" anyway: definition is "crime against humanity is an act of persecution or any large scale atrocities against a body of people, and is the highest level of criminal offense" apparently.
(this is the link Amnesty International accusing israel commiting crime against humanity)
Typical example of crime against humanity is what Hitler and the Nazis did to the Jewish People. And U.N. Human Rights Commission determined that what israel was doing is crime against humanity.
It is exactly what Hitler and Nazis did the jews.

Quite amazing that laws only apply to the weak. It's abhorrent.

Femme you are a provocateur.i wonder if you ever read history about palestine. i cant believe you are so little brained that you say you would definetely be much tougher with arabs if you were a jewish. and i cant imagine anything tougher than killing civilians and children.. shame on you femme..

haha
I know you have a delicate heart femme..
But israel palestine conflict is like the reality of 2+2=4.
It will be hard to say 2+2 is NOT 4.
It was your difficulty in this post!!

Being wise in old age is one thing....being stale is another

LAKOTA PROVERB

AlphaF, alias the HEAVY FEATHER here.
Do you have a name white woman?

Good news is that the Brits shall have to part their ways with the rest of humanity very soon..Flood is very real and very near

http://www.ace.mmu.ac.uk/eae/Global_Warming/Older/British_Isles.html

living in your little yellow submarines....The man wanted to tell you, but you had him shot too..

I could not care less what you ladies agree on...
A flood will serve you ladies right ))))))))))))))

You still have time to save yourselves...Behave nicely, stop insulting others, think rationally....and make a deal with the POPE, like Mr. Blair....

In a previous thread someone had said MR. Erdogan said global warming will 'skip' Turkey. Basically not effect it. Hello! Istanbul it a bad place for global warming, if the British Isles will be flooded how do you think Istanbul will fare? Not to mention the huge amount of beautiful beaches.

Maybe you have a very high up apartment Alpha? Maybe flooding will be good for Istanbul, you can just go about in boats like Venice. That would do a lot for the Dudu's there to have the romantic gondolas rather than taxis.

Nothing worse than wet dudus !

Every once in a while atv ana haber show the every time shocking news of Turkey being a desert in a few years while playing their "scary tune" the theme from Requiem for a Dream though...

Seems there's a disagreement on desert or flood