"Turkey's fight with these Kurdish terrorists cost over $135 billion and 35,000 lives. Now the US is threatening to route the $8.5 billion as aid to the Kurdish Iraqi government if Turkey enters into Iraq to establish its own security while the US herself is engaged in a military operation in Iraq to protect their own security thousands of miles away."
Maybe SOME of the Kurds are acting MORE like ALLIES!
Quite frankly, I hope you don't get one penny after the stunts you pulled before the war started! So I think 'questions' of 'dependability' should be aimed at Turkey not the other way around!
During Gulf War One, Turkey was the first country to do anything about Hussein. The very day after Iraq invaded Kuwait, Turkey closed the Iraqi border and lost a major trading partner. The economy went into free fall, and Bush I promised to help take up the slack. Economic warfare means that when you turn on the tap, there's no water. Basic services disappear. The help promised by the White House never arrived, and economically Turkey was left gasping on the ropes. Additionally, PKK support groups spread like crabgrass throughout the US and Western Europe, with no unambiguous refutation from the USA, while Turks by the thousands were massacred by PKK cadrés hell bent on establishing a Marxist-Leninist totalitarian hell hole out of Northern Iraq and all of Southeast Anatolia.
Turkish national security has been degraded, not enhanced, by US and Allied actions. They learned that no good deed goes unpunished, and were a bit more circumspect this time around. Turkish soldiers being blindfolded, bound, gagged and imprisoned by US forces in Northern Iraq in deference to Kurdish sentiments hasn't helped things, either.