BAGHDAD — Turkey might launch airstrikes or a limited ground incursion against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq but is not likely to unleash a major offensive, Iraq's foreign minister said Thursday.
His statement came as thousands of Iraqi Kurds demonstrated against a possible incursion into the north, vowing to fight Turkish troops that cross the border.
Turkey's parliament on Wednesday authorized the country's military to pursue Kurdish fighters from Turkey into Iraq during the next year. The vote fanned fears that a strike would damage the prosperity of the three primarily Kurdish provinces in the north, widely considered the leading success story in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq.
However, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari downplayed the chances of Turkey taking robust action against rebels of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, who operate in the rugged terrain of Iraq's Qandil mountains.
He cited the imminent winter, Turkey's plans to soon send a delegation to Baghdad, a coming visit by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to the United States, and the hosting Nov. 2 and 3 in Istanbul of a conference on Iraq to be attended by regional foreign ministers and others.
"I don't believe there will be any large-scale Turkish military incursions across the border," said the foreign minister, a member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party.
"If the worst would happen, one would not discount some air attacks on some . . . PKK positions or some very limited operations . . . to send some troops across certain border points to look for PKK," he said.
The Turkish threat has put the Bush administration in a bind: Turkey is a North Atlantic Treaty Organization ally that provides air bases and supply routes supporting American forces in Iraq, yet the Iraqi Kurds have been key allies of the U.S. going back to Hussein's rule.
Since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, American officials have tried to persuade Iraq's Kurds to move more aggressively against the PKK rebels, who have attacked soldiers and civilians in Turkey from bases in northern Iraq. But the discussions have gone nowhere, in part because the Turks have been unwilling to negotiate with the Iraqi Kurds' regional government for fear of legitimizing the Kurdish cause.
Turkey has launched periodic air and artillery strikes against PKK bases in Iraq for years. It has stationed troop contingents in the border areas since the late 1990s.
