(Photo: AP)
After granting the US permission to use Turkish air bases for strikes against radical terrorist group the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Syria, Turkish air forces began heavily pounding bases of the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in northern Iraq, causing ripples of dismay and outrage among senior officials within the US military, the US-based Fox News Channel has said.
According to a Fox News report on Tuesday, Turkey launched its air strikes against the PKK “with only 10 minutes notice to their American partners.”
“The U.S. had barely enough warning to make sure its own forces were out of the way, according to a military source with knowledge of the tension Turkey’s attack caused in the Combined Air and Space Operations Center [CAOC], the allied headquarters in the air war against ISIS [ISIL],” the online version of the Fox report said.
“A Turkish officer came into the CAOC, and announced that the strike would begin in 10 minutes and he needed all allied jets flying above Iraq to move south of Mosul immediately,” Fox reported a military source as saying, who then described events that took place “in the center, in a secret location in the Middle East.” “We were outraged,” Fox quoted the source as saying.
In addition to targeting forces engaged in the fight against ISIL, US officials believed the Turkish military’s sudden move raised the risk of friendly fire casualties, the report added.
“We had U.S. Special Forces not far from where the Turks were bombing, training Kurdish Peshmerga fighters,” the source said. “We had no idea who the Turkish fighters were, their call signs, what frequencies they were using, their altitude or what they were squawking [to identify the jets on radar].”
When the Turkish officer returned the next day to inform his international partners of another strike, US military officials made their objections clear. The Turkish liaison officer was sent away, but not before a back-and-forth in which US leaders demanded the specific flight plans of the attacking Turkish warplanes and the Turkish officer sought the locations of the US trainers.
The coalition air force officers in the ops center refused to share the sensitive information.
“No way we were giving that up,” said the military source, according to Fox News. “If one of our guys got hit, the Turks would blame us. We gave the Turks large grids to avoid bombing. We could not risk having U.S. forces hit by Turkish bombs.”
Critics of the new agreement between the US and Turkey say the deal gives Ankara cover to carry out strike missions against Kurdish fighters in Iraq and even Syria, where Kurds have won hard-fought gains against ISIL. While the Kurdish fighters have been remarkably effective fighting the terrorist army, Turkey remains their nemesis and fears the recent expansion of Kurdish control along the border could provide Kurds more incentive to form their own country in the future.
Turkey began a campaign of air strikes on Kurdish militants in northern Iraq, the PKK and ISIL fighters in Syria in July, in what acting Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu dubbed a “synchronized fight against terrorism.”
The Turkish military began bombing terrorist PKK targets in northern Iraq late last month, the first such strikes since a settlement process with the Kurds was launched in 2012, in response to the killing of two policemen in southeastern Turkey by the youth wing of the PKK.
The PKK is held as a terrorist organization by the US government and many EU nations.
“The PKK’s Syrian affiliate [the People’s Protection Unit (YPG)] has been the leading ground force against ISIS in Syria, and a close ally of the U.S. military,” the report said, adding “In Iraq, Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, separate from the PKK and YPG, have been praised by many U.S. lawmakers for their success in fighting ISIS [ISIL].”