下载

The talk is of political and diplomatic negotiation but this looks ominously like the early deployment of an invading army. Heavy artillery, convoys of trucks bringing supplies and soldiers as many as 100,000, it's believed. As well as helicopter gunships that crisscross the mountain ranges on the border of / eastern Turkey and Iraq.

The Kurdish PKK's attacks on the Turkish military are designed to provoke an incursion, it may well happen, full invasion/ though seems unlikely at this stage.

It will not be a full-scale invasion of any kind. It will be raids against the PKK hideouts. It will be raids against PKK facilities maybe in northern Iraq but / never would it be a full-scale invasion of any big territory of northern Iraq or the northern Iraqi city.

At home the crowds are baying for action against the PKK, the politicians have put the legal framework in place authorizing / attack . But the government's under pressure from Washington, / London and across the Middle East to step back from violence.

Northern Iraq is about the country's only stable and relatively prosperous region, conflict there would be bad news. / Commentators say the West simply has to assist Turkey, an NATO ally in need.

The failure to tackle the PKK presence is basically pushing Turkey towards Syria and Iran. Syria and Iran are, have been cooperating with Turkey in the fight against the PKK. The Syrian president was in Ankara last week, saying that Turkey has got any right to carry out an operation against the PKK. So in some way the West here is taking a huge risk of losing what has been a formidable ally in a very difficult neighbourhood for the past 50 years..

In northern Iraq even moderate Kurds with little heart-felt support for the PKK, are protesting at the possibility of the conflict developing here. In truth, the PKK's political popularity is waning, that is why they are doing this, trying to draw Turkey into fighting Kurds and using this to reignite public support.

That's the problem facing Turkey ceasefire offers notwithstanding, they have been asked to show / restraint. For each new attack the new military casualty makes that restraint harder to achieve day by day. Stuart Ramsay, Sky news