OK, I hear the responses loud and clear and I promise that I will try to blog more often. Today I want to touch on something near and dear to my heart. As most of you know, I went to Turkey this summer and while there I learned a lot about the Turkish/Kurdish conflict. To make a very long story short, the Kurds are a people group without a land. They are dispersed throughout the Middle East but mostly in southeastern Turkey and northern Iraq. The Turks and the Kurds, however, do not get along. There have been years and years of turmoil between them and it seems to be getting to the boiling point.
Just last week the Turkish parliament passed a bill that said Turkey would invade the Northern part of Iraq. This stems from a long period of Kurdish rebels bombing and attacking Turkish troops in both Iraq and in Turkey. Turkey is fed up with these rebels.
There are many problems with this:
1. The Kurds do not have a country to invade. They have little provinces in Iraq but for the most part they do not have a land that they really call their own. This will make it hard for the Turkish troops to sniff out the Kurdish rebels. Also, for the Kurds in Turkey, who did nothing wrong, this will make life almost unbearable.
2. As you might have guessed, President Bush is not in favor of this military action. He, understandably, does not want any more Turkish troops in Iraq. This, along with the recent push in the UN to accuse Turkey of genocide more than 80 years ago (whole other story) could eventually ruin our relationship with Turkey. This is bad because then we will have no access to sea routes controlled by Turkey that we use to get troops and military supplies into Iraq. It is also bad because there are countless "missionaries" in the country, some that I know personally, and this would make life very hard for them.
The latest news is that a group of Kurdish rebels just killed some more Turkish troops. It will be interesting to see how this pans out. The Kurdish leader is urging Turkey for peaceful talks but, unfortunately, it looks like a handful of rebels has ruined his chance. Turkey has a very strong military and the Kurds don't stand a chance at any kind of fight.
Pray for this situation. We need to have a good relationship with Turkey, it is very, very important for the future of the middle east. Also, pray that this will come to an end as peacefully as God allows it to.
2 comments:
It makes it difficult as well due to the fact that Turkey is politically and geographically part of both Asia and Europe. People don't realize that such a small country has such large political power.
its totally not a small country... but even larger in political terms i agree!
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