Turkeys

This has the potential to be a rather large story:

The WP goes up top with the Bush administration's frantic attempts to remind Turkey that it shares long-term interests with the U.S.. But that isn't convincing Turks, who are in what can best be described as a post- September 11 mood. Kurdish terrorist attacks killed 30 Turks in the past two weeks and newspapers are fronting full page photos of dead soldiers with Turkish flags. Now the Turks want to invade Iraq: Prime Minister Erdogan says parliament should unanimously "declare a mobilization" against the Iraqi Kurds, who haven't been restrained by the U.S.

The Armenian genocide resolution looks like it came at just the wrong time; the Turks are calling it the "last straw." TP also saw reports this evening from Al-Jazeera, via OpenSource.gov, that Turkish artillery are already shelling Kurdish positions inside Iraq.

The Turks are trying to blame the House resolution on Armenian genocide. But anyone who's been following the situation knows that Turkey and the Kurds have been at each other's throats for some time. It would appear that the resolution will simply be a convenient excuse to satisfy a plan to attack Iraq that has been brewing for some time, and likely would have happened anyway as Kurdistan emerges.