The Obama administration has turned down a Turkish request for drones
or for the deployment of US Predators at Turkish bases until Ankara
stops threatening Israel with armed attack, debkafile's
military and Washington sources report. Turkey has no functioning
unmanned aerial vehicles at present. The "technical problems" grounding
the Herons Israel sold Ankara have crippled the Turkish army's campaign
against the Kurdish PKK rebels – both in northern Iraq and in southeast
Turkey.
In recent days, therefore, the rebels have stepped up their raids on
Turkish territory, killing nine people including army and police
personnel.
Israeli officialdom and military chiefs are doing their utmost to keep the lid on the spiraling Turkish-Israel confrontation,
claiming that a military clash is not imminent because the US, NATO and
Europe won't let it happen. Turkey is after all a member of the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization. However, debkafile's
military sources report, the confrontation has already broken surface.
Despite Western efforts to contain the rising tension, the armed
conflict has quietly begun.
Our sources confirm that the Ankara press report of three Turkish frigates bound for the eastern Mediteranean to
challenge and disarm Israel warships outside its 12-mile territorial
waters was deliberately leaked by Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's office
to coincide with his trip to Cairo.
Israeli officials are making every effort to conceal the arrival of the
frigates opposite Israeli waters, while Washington, the NATO command in
Brussels try to dissuade Turkey from carrying out its threat to disable
the weapons of Israel naval vessels.
They fear that a firefight would drive the Israel-Turkish crisis into uncharted waters.
Since Saturday, Sept. 10, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has been in direct touch with Erdogan and warned him that a military clash by a NATO member with the Israeli Navy would have grave consequences for Turkey's future military ties with the US and the alliance.
Our sources explain that the denial of advanced US intelligence
technology on the heels of its cutoff from Israel would present the
Turkish army with serious operational, intelligence and high-tech
difficulties.
These difficulties are already hobbling Ankara's counterinsurgency campaign against the PKK at a critical juncture.
Since Aug. 17, a full-blown war has been underway against PKK
strongholds in northern Iraq – generally unnoticed in the West and in
Israel. The US, Turkey, Iran and the Kurdish Regional Government of
northern Iraqi have formed an improbable coalition to cooperate in
extinguishing the Kurdish rebellions staged by the PKK against Turkey
and the PJAK against Iran.
The US has confined its role to relaying intelligence collected by its
drones to the Turkish military and from its observation posts on the
northern Iraqi-Iranian border to Iranian Revolutionary Guards units.
The data is processed through the KRG government in Irbil. The KRG has
made its army's military and intelligence commands available for
coordinating the allies's operations through its territory.
Turkish special operations units are backed by Turkish air strikes and
coordinate their operations with the Americans and the Iranians.
The main battlefields are the Qandil Mountains region, Sinath-Haftanin, Hakurk and Gara.
The Turkish effort is impeded by three problems:
1. They are short of the knowhow for operating the intelligence and
technical systems of the 10 Heron drones purchased from Israel since
they expelled the Israeli technicians operating and keeping them in
order last year.
Ankara says two of the drones are "non-operational" and three others suffer from intractable engine problems.
Five more were shipped back to Israel because of a Turkish complaint
that they never reached the altitudes guaranteed by Israel's aerospace
industries. debkafile's sources report that test flights carried out in Israel showed nothing wrong with the drones' altitude capability.
2. The home-made Turkish drones (ANKA) brought into service were
unable to climb high enough to perform over the rebel hideouts perched
in the lofty Qandil mountain peaks. They also lacked the electronics for
relaying surveillance data to their command center.
3. Both Tehran and Ankara have no doubt that the intelligence data
released to them by the US military in the course of the
counterinsurgency campaign is partial and limited. The complete picture
remains exclusively in American hands. , Turkey sought the deployment of
US Predators on its soil to fill the gap. That request was spurned
until Prime Minister Erdogan backs away from his aggressive stance
against Israel.
For those reasons, Turkish Interior Minister Idris Naim Sahin announced Tuesday that his country would launch a cross-border ground offensive against the PKK in northern Iraq at any time.
Our military sources report that Ankara is pondering the same sort of
campaign as Israel launched in Gaza against Hamas terrorism in Dec.
2008. It aims to demonstrate Turkey's ability to defeat the Kurdish
rebels without US or Israeli drones.
Israel was wrongly accused of threatening to play the Kurdish card
against the Erdogan government in reprisal for those threats. The fact
is that Turkey is playing the Kurdish card against itself.