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February has been a busy month for U.S-Turkish defense talks. Deputy Chief of Turkish General Staff Gen. Ergin Saygun met with visiting Vice Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. James Cartwright and Acting Coordinator for U.S. Counterterrorism Frank Urbancic in Ankara on Feb. 13. The week before, Saygun was in Washington, D.C., meeting with the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee. U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey arrived in Turkey on Feb. 14. And in two weeks, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates will be in Ankara for talks with Turkish security officials.
The main topic of these discussions is the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Though Turkey has conducted five air raids against PKK targets in northern Iraq over the past couple of months, tensions between Ankara and Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) have quieted down a great deal since the summer of 2007, when all the talk was about Turkey launching a major incursion into northern Iraq.
A large part of this has to do with the weather. The PKK operates in fairly controlled seasonal cycles. In the winter months, the PKK retreats to the Qandil mountain range along the Iranian border and goes into hibernation. Turkey has attempted to take advantage of this winter retreat by launching a few airstrikes aimed at taking out pockets of PKK forces while they are all concentrated in one area. But, thanks to the PKK’s mountainous safe-havens, these strikes have not been all that effective.
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