Current Events Summary #3

There has been a mixture of good and bad news coming from the Middle East cncerning foreign relations in the past few weeks. As a resolution to an earlier news story, Israel has admitted to carrying out a strike on a Syrian military intallation in September. At the time of the attack, Syria had suspected Israel and accused the country of being responsible for the attack, but Israeli government officials kept quiet, and the military censor disallowed anyone to reveal any information concerning the attack. President Bashir- al Assad said that the strike showed Israel's "visceral antipathy towards peace", and that Syria reserved the right to strike back, although he did not say how; "Retaliate doesn't mean missile for missile and bomb for bomb. We have our means to retaliate, maybe politically, maybe in other ways. But we have the right to retaliate,", said Assad. It is still unknown why Israel attacked Syria and what was attacked (BBC News).
On a happier note, it has been announced that Turkey and Iraq were going to help fight terrorism by "signing a counter-terrorism pact aimed at cracking down on separatist Kurdish rebels who have been attacking Turkey from bases in Iraq" (CNN.com). It was signed by the Interior Ministers of Iraq and Turkey, but it does not satisfy all of Turkey's wishes; it was demanded that Iraq would send troops after Kurdish rebels who are escaping across the border to northern Iraq. "It was not possible to reach a deal on chasing Kurdish rebels, however, we hope this issue will be solved in the future," Besir Atalay, the Interior Minister of Turkey said. "We are expecting this cooperation against terrorism to be broadened as much as possible."
However, later in the month, Turkey was seeking parliamentary approval for a potential cross border strike against Kurdish separatists in Iraq. The Prime Minister has been under pressure to do this from the citizens of Trukey after 15 soldiers were killed by the separatists in a matter of days. The U.S. has warned Turkey that this course of action is not advisable; people in Baghdad and Washington fear that an attack could destabilize northern Iraq (BBC News).
With more unfortunate news concerning Turkey, the country has recently recalled its embassador to the U.S. over a conflict over "congressional efforts to label the World War I era killings of Amenians by Ottoman Turkish forces 'genocide'" (CNN.com). Turkey says that while Amenians were killed, it was not genocide but a "massacre in choatic times". The U.S. was also warned that if the U.S. House Committee of Affairs passed the movement to label the killings genocide, repercussions "won't be pleasant". "If they wanted to bring their ambassador back for consultations or do something else, that is their decision. I certainly think that it will not do anything to limit our efforts to continue to reach out to Turkish officials, to explain our views, to engage them on this issue and again to make clear that we intend to work on this with Congress", said Tom Casey, a State Department spokesman. However, not everyone in the U.S. is concerned over this turn of events; "The Turkish government will not act against the United States because that would be against their own interests,"House Foreign Affairs Chairman Tom Lantos told CNN. "I'm convinced of this". Many people, for many reasons, however, beleive that the U.S. should play it safe on this issue, since we depend on Turkey for so much involving the war in Iraq.