Sir, - Michael Jansen (The Irish Times, November 10th) is right to point to discrepancies between the US's hard-line approach to Iraq and its much softer one towards Israel. Turkey also has got off lightly. Turkey has made several incursions, including air attacks, into the so-called "no-fly" zone in northern Iraq and now has begun to create a five-mile buffer zone along its border with Iraq.
The Patriotic Front of Kurdistan (PUK) claims that Turkey is using napalm and cluster bombs in the region. There is no doubt that Turkey is adding to its arsenal of weapons of mass destruction and lining them up against its own and now against the neighbouring Kurdish population.
There is, however, no hint of sanctions on Turkey. On the contrary, Turkey is one of the largest recipients of US military aid, and the US will use Turkish territory to launch attacks on Iraq when it sees fit. To quote Alexander Solzhenitsyn in The Times (August 21st, 1997), "When they [Kurds] are not being squashed by Iraq, with the tacit consent of the United States, then they are being smashed by a Nato member, Turkey, even on non-Turkish territory, while the whole civilised world looks on with utter indifference. Are the Kurds a `superfluous nation' on this earth?" - Yours, etc.,
Kuridstan Information Network, Upper Camden Street, Dublin 2.