Turkey: Kurds have U.S. Weapons

Turkey: Kurds have U.S. Weapons

WASHINGTON -- Turkey's top diplomat in Washington said Wednesday that American weaponry has been found in the hands of Iraq-based Kurdish fighters captured while sneaking across the border to carry out attacks against Turkish civilians and military forces.

Ambassador Nabi Sensoy said he does not believe the United States is supplying weapons directly to fighters of the Kurdistan Workers Party, a group better known as the PKK that for years has fought for an independent Kurdistan within Turkey. The American weapons, Sensoy suggested, may be coming from supplies provided by the U.S. military to the Iraqi government.

Another side-effect of this war, to be expected I suppose.

IF the US is secretly supplying weapons to the PKK,
for those willing to entertain that thought, what reasons
would the US have for doing that?

Any other questions, comments?

Turkey is the US's ally and Nato member
so i doubt the US would go that far and arm a group against a muslim country which openly shares relations with Israel and is run serculer and is Nato member

They probably have Chinese, Russian, French, and British weapons as well.
You can weapons from every country in that area of the world the East and West have been making billions selling them for the last 60 years.

OK...I am starting to think and I am not alone in thinking this, that a major reason for the Iraq War and a major philosophy behind Middle East foreign affairs among the coalition of the willing is divide and conquer. You see, the whole Middle East used to be one giant Muslim empire. There is no reason to believe this will not happen again in the future. As you can imagine, this terrifies some people, so their solution is to keep the Muslims weak and fighting amongst themselves. Establishing a Kurdistan that is constantly causing headaches for some of the big players in the region (Iraq, Iran, and Turkey) is one way to do this. Furthermore, if Kurdistan owes their existence to the United States and Israel, the theory is, at least, that they will see these countries as allies.

I think it's a very dumb strategy with a huge possibility of backfire.

heres a clue-->

the USA armed and equiped the "Mujahadeen",
also encouraged/gave intel to the 'tribes' to fight the 'Soviets'


the end-game is for all parties to fight one-another,,,leaving
the UsA or its proxies to 'pick up the pieces'

This is indeed a side effect of this war..

If you have happened to come across some of my threads on Kurdistan, I explain "why" the Kurds have US weapons (aside from black market)

Kurdistan guards all of North Eastern Iraq.. it is called South Kurdistan, the government receives large .. very large, sums of money and weapons from the United States...

We have no troops in Kurdistan, a few advisers and maybe a few SF doing their own thing, but absolutely NO troops. Kurdistan does that for us, and it turned out they are very good at what they do (build walls and segregate them selves from the fools in the South) .. We arm them, sure, and while they build universities and million dollar housing projects, the rest of Iraq is in turmoil.

Yeah Turkey, tough break but they may have just realized....

The Kurds are 150,000k + and armed with American military ingenuity.. invasion apparently is not looking so hot right now.

Originally posted by Rockpuck
This is indeed a side effect of this war..

If you have happened to come across some of my threads on Kurdistan, I explain "why" the Kurds have US weapons (aside from black market)

Kurdistan guards all of North Eastern Iraq.. it is called South Kurdistan, the government receives large .. very large, sums of money and weapons from the United States...

We have no troops in Kurdistan, a few advisers and maybe a few SF doing their own thing, but absolutely NO troops. Kurdistan does that for us, and it turned out they are very good at what they do (build walls and segregate them selves from the fools in the South) .. We arm them, sure, and while they build universities and million dollar housing projects, the rest of Iraq is in turmoil.

Yeah Turkey, tough break but they may have just realized....

The Kurds are 150,000k + and armed with American military ingenuity.. invasion apparently is not looking so hot right now.

Yeah, but what's going to happen to "Kurdistan" after the inevitable American pullout?

It could be crushed if Iran and Turkey joined forces against it.

But who's to say this is not the plan. Let Turkey move south while our forces move east. That way, Iraq doesn't really fall to anyone we don't trust to be on our side, it has someone to prop up the puppets we helped put in power there, and our troops are free to fight in Iran.

And all it takes is some power in Iraq to invite Turkey to help, and after all, they would be fighting the "terrorist" that have been causing problems in Turkey, so we could afford to be understanding, since we're supposedly doing the exact same thing.

It's only an idea for why this might be happening, but it would be one way to free up troops for a war in Iran.

Uber:

Yeah, but what's going to happen to "Kurdistan" after the inevitable American pullout?

It could be crushed if Iran and Turkey joined forces against it.

This is the point, America will not openly support Kurdistan because it may incite them to really divide away from the main portion of Iraq.. even though America recognizes the South Kurdistan's Prime minister and legit government.

In the end, I believe America will split the nation into 3 sectors, which will most likely fall apart anyways.. think of this as another Yugoslavia.

Iran and Turkey could combine against Kurdistan, but it would be a deadly battle .. aside from the fact that America is arming and funding Kurdistan, the Iraqi government of Saddam held them in check, even when Turkey attacked them under Saddam, Saddam held them down first, then let Turkey inside to do as they pleased.. with out Saddam, without restriction, a Kurdish uprising WITHIN Turkey not just in Iraq, would bring Turkey to a grinding halt..

With SK fully operational outside Turkish borders, the black market of drugs and weapons has exploded, people bring in oil, food, manufactured goods, weapons, drugs ect, ect, ect across the borders everyday .. smaller militia groups mostly funded by the PKK will eventually get the weapons they need to defense or offense.. one cannot deny that the PKK has been more active then ever now that they have SK to hide within.

NGC

But who's to say this is not the plan. Let Turkey move south while our forces move east. That way, Iraq doesn't really fall to anyone we don't trust to be on our side, it has someone to prop up the puppets we helped put in power there, and our troops are free to fight in Iran.

The United States of America, the world last Super Power cannot effectively keep control. Do you think a post 3rd world nation with a cold war military through strong arm tactics will keep control? Turkey alone could loose 25%+ of its army just getting control over the SK region, not to mention fighting the actual Iraqi army, be it they are poorly trained, Turkey is no America. Aside from that Turkey literally cannot move outside of its borders in this fashion.. they need men to keep the Kurdish peoples down within their own borders.

As for us attacking Iran.. do you honestly see the US congress, military agreeing with the president to go to war??? We would have no allies, and we would have 0 domestic support.

And all it takes is some power in Iraq to invite Turkey to help, and after all, they would be fighting the "terrorist" that have been causing problems in Turkey

Wrong. The PKK is not in control of the SK government, in fact the SK government does not recognize the PKK as a legitimate political force, but as a terrorist network that operates against the oppression within Turkey and Iran..

The SK government has authorized the Turkish government to attack rouge Kurdish forces that fire over the border into Turkey...

Aside from that there is only so much Turkey can offer Iraq.. honestly if anything I see Iran assisting Iraq, as they are a Shia nation, Turkey is not..

It's only an idea for why this might be happening, but it would be one way to free up troops for a war in Iran.

Its happening because of increased military activity on the part of the PKK terrorist network, Istanbul is attacked many times a year by these guys, and now weekly if not daily military outpost are bombed or shot at from inside Iraq into Turkey...

So Turkey gets pissed and fights along the border, and finds the PKK units armed with what else... American Weapons.. because there are no troops in Kurdistan territory.. Kurdish troops, generals or typical black market sales.. the weapons end up going from Kurdish government control to terrorist control. Its inevitable in this region that this cycle continues, Turkey is obviously pissed that their enemy Kurdistan has superior weapons.

I want to thank everyone for their contributions, this has helped me, and hopefully others, develop a better understanding of this situation.

I would like to point out two articles:

Iraqi Kurds have territorial ambitions on Turkey, top diplomat implies

[...]Şensoy's remarks implying that Barzani is eyeing part of Turkey's territory reflects a deep concern in the Turkish state establishment that the Kurds, if they manage to have their own independent state in Iraq's north, would then seek expansion.[...]

Although this is no secret, you mentioned it might be too
late to attack Kurdistan, but what if they had help?

Iranian Military, Kurdish Rebels Clash Along Iran-Iraq Border

This might be something to keep an eye on.

Here's another update:
About 200,000 troops in SE Turkey-security sources