Turkey has been building up its forces on the northern Iraq border for weeks now. They’ve got tanks. They’ve got commandos. They’ve got everything needed to take on the PKK, who may or may not have decided to tuck in their tails and lie low.

In fact, they’ve got more than 100,000 soldiers to attack the estimated 3,500 PKK guerrillas and it strikes me as more sensible than the Cheney/Rumsfeld/Feist/Wolfowitz crowd who thought 130,000 troops were more than enough for the entire country of Iraq. Someone see if the Turkish Army staff is available to plan our next wars of conquest.

The Turkish government seems determined to take this all the way to its end game.

Turkey sharpened its threat to invade northern Iraq yesterday when the Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, declared its army ready to attack Kurdish rebels 'when needed', regardless of international opposition.

With Turkey massing troops on the Iraqi border and preparing to invade and crush the PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party), Erdogan has been under intense pressure from America, Iraq and other countries to pull back from a move that could further destabilise the region.

Today we learned that Turkish tanks have fired into Iraq and Turkish jets have bombed there, also.

The state-run Anatolia news agency reported that Turkish aircraft attacked suspected rebel positions that were detected during reconnaissance flights. There were no reports of guerrilla casualties.

Cicek reiterated Turkey's determination to carry out an offensive if the U.S.-backed Iraqi government and Iraqi Kurdish administration, which Turkey accuses of turning a blind eye to activities of the Kurdish rebels in the territory, do not crack down on the rebel group [emph added]

This could be a key phrase because they are establishing a fall back position. Unfortunately, they’re setting the ground rules so that Condleeza Rice, Nuri al-Maliki and Kurdish President Massoud Barzani are expected to unwrap this hairball.

Prime Minister Erdogan is an honor graduate of the George W Bu$h International School of Diplomacy.*

But the Prime Minister ratcheted up the rhetoric yesterday. 'Whenever an operation is needed to be carried out, we will do that,' he told a crowd in the western city of Izmit. 'We do not need to ask anything from anyone for that ... we make our decisions on our own.’

The Turks have even agreed upon a date, which is unusual, but wise since it makes the pending combat someone else’s fault. Guess who the Turkish Army expects to solve the problem?

On Friday, Turkey's military chief said the country would wait until Erdogan met President George Bush in Washington on 5 November before deciding on an offensive. Erdogan said Turkey could not be pinned down by dates in deciding whether to attack. 'We can't say when or how we will do it, we will just do it,' he added.

The best take on this whole thing comes from Fred Thompson. The only really intelligent words he has ever spoken were written for him by someone else.

Admiral Josh Painter: This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we'll be lucky to live through it.

* - UPDATE: The estimable Cernig notes that the best thing Turkey learned at that school is "You're either with us or against us."