Into the valley of Death
Rode the ten thousand.
Or six hundred.
Turkish Military Tells of Incursion Into Iraq
By SEBNEM ARSU and SABRINA TAVERNISE
Published: February 23, 2008ISTANBUL — Turkeys military said Friday that it had sent troops into northern Iraq on Thursday night, in a limited operation to weaken Kurdish militants there.
The Turkish military announced the operation on its Web site on Friday, but Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan later played down the mission, describing it as limited in size and emphasizing that the soldiers would return to Turkey in the shortest possible time.
Reports of the numbers of troops varied. According to Reuters, Turkeys foreign minister and an unnamed American official in Baghdad said that that only a few hundred had been deployed, while Turkish television reported that the number was around 10,000.