Is This The First Time The Peshmerga Has Crossed Turkish Borders?

Let me answer the question before proceeding with the discussion. No, this is not the first time that the peshmerga forces have passed the Turkish borders.
Countless times in the past, they have passed the borders, stalked their enemies -- whom they refer to as traitors -- and killed them within Turkish territory. This territory also witnessed occasional clashes between Jalal Talabani and Mustafa Barzani's peshmerga forces.
Sait Kırmızıtoprak (Dr. Şıvan) was from Tunceli (Dersim). He studied medicine in university. During Adnan Menderes' government's crackdown on Kurdish intellectuals in 1959, he was arrested and tried. He was one of the leading figures of the pro-Kurdish movement in the 1960s. He believed in the necessity of an armed struggle, and he wanted to organize a guerrilla movement and fight against Turkey. He convinced several others to go to northern Iraq in 1970s. He was greeted by Barzani. The group coming from Turkey wanted Barzani to give them a geographical area where they could hold armed and political trainings.

But Barzani didn't want to offend Turkey. On the other hand, Dr. Şıvan and his friends nurtured a very romantic perspective, hoping that the Kurdish national movement would support them. But their hope remained unrequited, and Dr. Şıvan and his followers were held responsible for the assassination of Turkish Kurdistan Party (TKP) leader Sait Elçi and his followers, and they were executed. This incident is the most tragic incident in pro-Kurdish political history.
In welcoming Dr. Şıvan, Barzani asked, "Does the Turkish government know that you have come here? Dr. Şıvan answered as follows: "We don't want the Turkish government to know that we have come here because it may cause a nuisance for the revolution [referring to the Kurdish revolution in northern Iraq]. So nobody knows we're here." Barzani replied: "In 1962, I was in the Behdinan region. The Turkish government was very good to us. We passed the borders and killed 23 people [referring to traitors]. I sent a message to the governor of Hakkari [Çolemerike] saying we were pursuing those people and that we didn't have any other business. The gendarmerie commander and governor delivered those people to us and they helped us a lot. When we asked for their help; they wanted us to send a man to them. We sent our man. And they sent him to Hakkari, then Diyarbakır and eventually to İstanbul. They told us that if the tribes close to the order came to our help, they wouldn't meddle with it. They came to our help and gave us money as well. We should not cause any distress or discomfort to the Turkish government."
The most important consequence of this historic meeting: Turkey's policy towards northern Iraq is not something that has come to be in recent years. It is an official policy that dates back to half a century ago. It is endorsed by the Turkish state. It can hardly be attributed to the gendarmerie commander or governor to whom Barzani was referring.
The nature of the bilateral ties between Turkey and the Kurdish government in northern Iraq has not changed since the emergence of the de facto Kurdish government there. It was Turkey that trained the peshmerga forces in 1990s under the pretext of fighting against the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). Now, the same peshmerga forces are preparing to pass the Turkish borders in order to help the PKK, or its offshoot the Democratic Union Party (PYD), in Kobani. This is what the international coalition wants. What should Turkey do? Let me answer that question tomorrow.

ORHAN MİROĞLU (Cihan/Today's Zaman)