Saddam announces plans to invade Turkey

national | miscellaneous | news report Wednesday March 05, 2003 00:34 by Maubere

This is an exclusive report from Bagdad Network News (BNN)

Baghdad Network News (BNN)

The world was stunned last night when Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein announced that he was planning to invade Turkey. In a televised statement President Hussein said “ We have decided that the brutal regime in Turkey must be changed for the sake of peace...our reason for invading Turkey is to liberate the Kurdish people in the South-east of the country, for many years they have lived under the savage rule of the Turkish army”. He quoted at length from an Amnesty International report detailing the abuses committed by the Turkish authorities against the Kurdish people, “ they have killed over 30,000 Kurds over the past ten years, they have tortured thousands of Kurds, they have destroyed 4000 villages and forced over 2 million Kurds into the large cities in the area so that they can be controlled and to drain support for Kurdish freedom fighters. They even deny that the Kurdish people exist, it is illegal to speak Kurdish on the TV or radio, to teach it in schools or to give your children Kurdish names”. The President outlined the moral case for regime change in Turkey, “how long must the Kurdish people of Turkey suffer this brutal oppression, do they not have the same rights as every free nation in the world?”

Saddam Hussein’s plan ran into immediate controversy and many people have said they oppose the plan, even members of his own government. Saddam is leading the “hawks” while the “doves” are led by deputy prime minister Tarip Aziz. Aziz has said “any attempt to liberate the Kurdish people must have widespread international support, a United Nations resolution backing our invasion plans is vital, any unilateral action could jeopardise our relations with other countries in the region”. Despite this the hawks seem determined to proceed with or without the backing of the United Nations. Saddam has said that the UN must back him or it would become “irrelevant” he said “the international community must face up to aggression and rogue states such as Turkey, their can be no appeasement of the Turkish extremists”. Many opposition groups have condemned President Saddam’s plan, the Iraqi Democratic Party has said “ we all recognise the need to confront the terrorist regime in Turkey and to liberate its people, however this is a reckless and irresponsible plan, at a time of economic recession this war will cost a huge amount of money and our army could sustain large casualties in their fight to free the Kurdish people. We could also risk upsetting our neighbours in the region and this could lead to widespread instability in the Middle-East. We are as patriotic as Saddam Hussein and his government but we feel it would not be in our national interests to invade Turkey at the moment”. Others have pointed out that the invasion could kill large numbers of Turkish civilians, the small Liberal Party of Iraq has said that they could not support any attempt to liberate Turkey if thousands of civilians were killed in the process.

The Government has responded to these criticisms by say “we are confident that the invasion will not take too long and we guarantee that we will make every effort to protect civilian life in Turkey”. President Saddam said “it is a difficult choice, if we invade many people could be killed, however if we do nothing then even more people will be killed by the Turkish army, we also have intelligence that shows Turkey is planning terrorist attacks on Iraq and our allies, we must stop them before they have a chance to strike. We know they have murdered thousand of their own citizens, they would have no problem in launching terrorist attacks against Iraq. My duty is to protect the Iraqi people. In the 1930’s the leaders of Europe failed to stand up to Hitler, they choose appeasement and millions of people died as a result, we cannot afford to choose appeasement now. Many people object to our plan to liberate the Kurds but my question to them is, how else can we free the Kurdish people?”.

A protest against the war was held in Bagdad today. The police had feared that trouble-makers bent on formenting confrontation had infiltrated the march and were planning violence, however the heavy security presence ensured that the event passed off without any arrests. The organisers were expecting a large crowd but they were very disappointed with the turnout. A number of speakers at the protest said they oppose any attack on Turkey even if the UN backs it. The government has reacted angrily to this “ we all want peace but sometimes robust action is the only way to secure peace, these protestors say they don’t support regime change in Turkey, don’t they think the Kurdish people of Turkey have a right to be free? Their attitude seems perverse, they suggest that President Hussein is somehow as morally repugnant as the evil regime in Turkey, this is an offensive insult to Iraq and we won't dignify such comments by responding to them”. The government spokesman said President Saddam was worried that some of the protestors were planning violent attacks against military bases in the country in an attempt to disrupt the invasion plans. He also said “we think that many well-meaning people who attended the protest may have been manipulated by extreme left-wing groups who are trying to infect others with thier subversive and bankrupt ideology, they are cynically using this planned war as a means to increase their influence in the country”. Anti-Iraqi protests also took place in countries across the Middle-East. President Hussein said he belived that some of the anti-war protestors supported the murderous Turkish regime and he found it "grotesque" that anyone could do this. He also said " we respect the right of people to peacefully protest but they cannot use violence to further their political views".

Many media commentators have expressed support for President Saddam’s plan. Writing in the Iraqi Times Kemal Myerz said “at last our President is going to stand up to the hand-wringing do-gooders whose hatred of Iraq grows more fanatical everyday. For too long our hands have been tied by these liberal tree-hugging slackers whose only motivation is a perverse and cowardly aversion to taking action against criminal governments like the one in Turkey. These un-patriotic pinko leftie traitors have had too much influence in our freedom loving country, the silent majority of Iraqi people support President Saddam’s brave plan to liberate the Kurdish people of Turkey, the only people against it are the Chardonnay-quaffing, latté-sipping chattering classes and tofu-eating, pot-smoking crusties. It sickens me to see people in other countries protesting against this war, they are now showing their truew colours, they are nothing but anti-Iraqi bigots who prefer ranting and hate-filled diatribes to a rational debate about the liberation of the Kurds in Turkey”.

Human rights activists have denounced President Hussein’s plan and his supposed concern for the Kurdish people in Turkey. Mustafa Ali from Iraqi Rights Watch has claimed that “ Saddam Hussein’s government murdered 200,000 Kurdish people in Northern Iraq during the 1980’s, some of whom he killed with chemical weapons, how can we take his claim to want to liberate the Kurds in Turkey seriously? He doesn’t even care about people in Iraq, let alone Turkey”. When asked why he thought Saddam wanted to invade Turkey Mr Ali said “ we can rule out any humanitrian motive so the only possible reason would be to capture the sources of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, if he controlled this priceless resource he could control the entire Middle East”. He also claimed that President Hussein was going to remove the top levels of the Turkish Government and Army but retain the bulk of the Turkish regimes murderous army, “Saddam will not liberate the Kurdish people, the army that has carried out atrocities against the Kurds will be kept in place by Saddam, the only difference is that a pro-Iraqi puppet government will be installed in Ankara”.

This theory has been dismissed by the government as “a paranoid conspiracy theory with no basis in reality”. Regarding the alleged killing of Kurds in Iraq the spokesman said “this is a baseless slur on the Iraqi President. We admit that we made some mistakes in our campaign to prevent Kurdish terrorists from destabilising the country, but to say that we deliberately targeted civilians is preposterous. In the past we pursued some policies that back fired, our attempts to help the Kurdish people in Northern Iraq to free themselves from terrorist infiltrators were heavy-handed sometimes”. Regarding plans for post-war Turkey the spokesman assured us that democratic elections would be held in two or three years, as soon as stability can be restored to the country”. He then said “We do not object to people criticising our policies but they can never question our motives, we always place human rights at the forefront our our actions”. The Turkish government has murdered thousands of Kurdish people, we have a moral duty to stop this slaughter, we believe that any one who criticise us is giving comfort to the generals in Turkey, who have no respect for human rights, by protesting against this war they are stopping the Kurdish people from winning their freedom”.