October 10, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- Just one week after concluding a security agreement with the Iraqi government to combat terrorism, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on October 9 that he would call on parliament to grant permission for a military incursion into Iraq to pursue Turkish-Kurdish rebels from the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) holed up in Iraq.
July 6, 2007 | By CLAUDE SALHANI (UPI International Editor)
WASHINGTON, July 6 (UPI) -- The partition of Iraq is far from an original idea. The notion has been floated around Washington and Baghdad numerous times since the start of the war in 2003. Pundits, journalists and politicians have in the past proposed the partition of Iraq in various forms despite strong opposition from Iraqi leaders, the Bush administration and the Iraqi Study Group headed by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Congressman Lee Hamilton.
One of the critical outcomes of the July 22 general elections was that the Turkish National Assembly produced a result in line with the “justice in representation” principle and contributed to fortification of a democratic parliamentary system. One of the most striking indicators of the “representation capability” the assembly exhibited was the existence of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) in Parliament.
April 10, 2006
By Yigal Schliefer | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
Underlying social problems remain in the Kurdish southeast, where protests turned violent last week.
DIYARBAKIR, TURKEY - Relative calm has returned to this city in Turkey's southeast after three days of violent clashes between Kurds and Turkish security forces. But the underlying tensions have not gone anywhere.
By Arwa Damon
QANDIL MOUNTAINS, Iraq (CNN) -- The women line the mountainside, locked hand in hand in their green battle fatigues, and begin dancing. It's a victory dance, they say, that is routine after raids across the border on Turkish troops.
Monday, December 10, 2007 | James Palmer, Chronicle Foreign Service
Sulaymaniya, Iraq - The Kurdish region of northern Iraq has withstood the destruction of its villages and deadly gas attacks at the hands of Saddam Hussein. Now, as the semiautonomous Kurdish government strives to increase its independence, the region is coping with another adversary - cholera.
January 23, 2008 | By Kimi Yoshino | Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
BAGHDAD -- Iraqi lawmakers approved a new flag Tuesday, defusing a long-simmering dispute with the country's northern Kurds, who had refused to fly the national banner because of its connection to Saddam Hussein.
21 January 2008
Department of Public Information • News and Media Division • New York
With heightened security in the “red zone” of Baghdad and on its streets, a drastic drop in violence, good economic growth prospects and a warming of political relations between the majority Shiite and minority Sunni religious groups, the chances for a stable and unified Iraq were encouraging, Staffan de Mistura, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for that country, said at a Headquarters press conference today.
