Prime Minister Recep Tayyip ErdoganOn Wednesday, I asked about January's Uludere killings, in which 34 civilians died, who gave the order to jets to bomb? And, beyond the death, how does this incident --- and the claim that the "intelligence" behind the attack came from the US --- affect Turkey's relations within the context of its Kurdish problem?
More questions....
Turkish Armed Forces said that the intelligence --- which apparently to smugglers being wrongly identified as Kurdish insurgents --- was given by "national sources", but when eyes turned to the National Intelligence Service (MIT), it denied that it provided information.
Whether the intelligence came from the US or from within Turkey, why was the final decision to bomb given by the head of the Chief of Staff''s Command and Control Center, Brigadier General Salim Cuneyt Kavuncu, without any orders from his superiors? Why did the decision not come from the Government, even from the Prime Minister himself? Is this the reason why Kavuncu retired following the incident?
MP Levent Gok, a member of Parliaent's Uludere sub-commission, said that they watched Israeli-made Heron's video footages. How did this happen? If the initial intelligence was given by US-made Predators, was it automatically transferred to the Herons? Or did Herons come to the area following the US information?
None of these questions may be answered. According to the Turkish daily Yenisafak, the legal case is to be given to the military court amid a consensus that the incident occurred due to "mistakes on duty". If so, a real enquiry into the incident is likely o be shelved for years and may never come to the table.
Meanwhile, politics moves on, even as the opposition Peace and Democracy Party's Hasip Kaplan said that it would sue Washington for the intelligence. Nechirvan Barzani, prime minister of the semi-autonomous Kurdish administration in northern Iraq, arrived in Ankara on Wednesday evening. The ruling Justice and Development Party's deputies have been in the eastern part of the country, holding meetings with NGOs, trade associations, leading figures of the region, and journalists. MP Abdurrahim Akdag said that the government is readyfor new reforms, including an amnesty based on a democratic platform, as long as the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) lays down arms.
And the bloodshed continues: today three soldiers were killed by PKK members in the Mediterranean province of Hatay.