What Happens in Tel Afer ?

Telafer is a city, 60 km far from the Syrian border and at the North-West of Iraq. It is 100 km away from the Turkish border. In case the second border gate is opened, the road linking Turkey to Iraq will first pass through Telafer and extend to Mosul and the south. In other words, it is strategic for Turkey’s access to Iraq. In spite of Kirkuk’s having a mixed ethnic structure, Telafer’s overwhelming majority has historically been of Turkomans who are predominantly Shiite. It goes without saying that Shiite resistance forces received some support, even though limited, in this city...Untel recently, Telafer was a comparatively calm and peaceful  city of Iraq. However recently, individual incidents and the American operation on resistance forces, spoiled peace here. Before the operation U.S. notified Ankara that this will be a very limited police operation...In fact, Foreign Minister Gul said last Monday that there was no problem about Turkomans... However, America which talked about a limited operation, started producing numerous excuses last week, saying that there were 300 resistance forces here. In parallel, it started expanding the operation and cut all entries to the city, leaving one-ton bombs on it. It is true that there are resistance forces in the city but it is also a fact that U.S. is using immeasurable force in an indiscriminate manner.  Eventually, it had been Turkomans who suffered the biggest damage in these raids. An important portion of the people deserted the city and started living in tents...All these prompted Foreign Minister Gul to warn Colin Powell to stop the operation and since the beginning of the war in Iraq, Turkey warned U.S. of using indiscriminate force and unmeasured force. This is important because Turkey interfered for the first time into a Turkoman city, other than Kirkuk and showed to the world that it will not remain a spectator to the developments in Iraq, on the basis of kinship.The statement of US Ambassador that the people of Telafer are peaceful and Turkomans were not involved in clashes, is worthwhile noting. Then a question to the ambassador: Should the fate of a peaceful people be, being bomb-raided from the air?Â