BY MEHMET TEZKAN
VATAN- Turkey has struggled against the terrorist leader Abdullah Ocalan for years. From 1984 till 1999. The terrorist leader had a protector then: Syria. He would talk large and threaten Turkey. Ankara would then turn to Syria, call Syrian President Hafyz Esat and want him to make the terrorist leader stop talking. And he would always say that he is not in Syria and they didn't know where he was. The same things went on for years.
And one day Syria saw that the straw that broke the camel's back came.
He caught the terrorist leader and deported him. Thus, the main base of the terrorist PKK shifted to northern Iraq. After nearly five years of silence, when the US invaded Iraq, both the terrorist PKK and the peshmergas found themselves a new protector. And Turkey got another trouble, a new Ocalan: Barzani. He talks large and threatens Turkey, too. Ankara calls Baghdad and wants them to make him stop talking, just like they used to call Syria. Terrorist PKK and its leader Ocalan used to be on the top of the agenda at National Security Council meetings. Today, terrorist PKK is taken up again but together with Barzani. Because he looks after it. But what is the problem? The Kirkuk referendum. Barzani aims at making Kirkuk a Kurdish city and the capital of the Kurdish state he plans to establish. Ankara objects and says that the demographic structure of Kirkuk is being changed. In such an atmosphere Barzani said that if Turkey intervened in Kirkuk, they would intervene in Diyarbakir. What courage! How would he intervene? By sending the PKK militants he is supporting with weapons to Turkey? If so, it means that he became like terrorist Ocalan.