DefenseNews.com
April 8 2007

Strains Remain
Iraq, Kurd Differences Keep Turk-U.S. Rift From Healing

By UMIT ENGINSOY, WASHINGTON And BURAK EGE BEKDIL, ANKARA

Uncertainty over Iraq’s future and major differences regarding the
war-torn country’s Kurdish population imperil a close, 60-year
alliance between Turkey and the United States, key officials from
both sides warned.
Turkey’s relationship with its NATO ally began to unravel four years
ago, when its parliament refused to assist in the U.S. invasion of
Iraq. Since then, the ties have only partly recovered. Iraq remains
the main stumbling block.
`Iraq’s future is the largest issue in our relationship with the
United States,’ Edip Baser, a retired Army general, now Turkey’s
special envoy for countering terrorism, told Defense News during a
late March visit to Washington.
`Iraq today is what it is – messy, conflict-ridden, undermined by
terrorists and facing an uncertain future,’ the U.S. ambassador to
Ankara, Ross Wilson, told a March 27 conference of U.S. and Turkish
business groups in Washington. `It has been and, in many respects,
remains the single most complicated problem in U.S.-Turkish
relations.’
A major deterioration of U.S.-Turkish ties would hurt American
national interests, particularly in the Middle East, officials and
analysts say. Turkey borders Iraq, Iran and Syria.
Turkey is deeply worried over the independence aspirations of Iraqi
Kurds, Washington’s closest allies in Iraq. It fears that the
emergence of an independent Kurdish state with vast oil resources in
neighboring northern Iraq also may prompt its own restive Kurdish
population to seek secession.
While the United States says it is committed to Iraq’s territorial
integrity, it urges Turkey to acknowledge the Kurdish reality and
reconcile with the Kurdistan Regional Government, a semi-autonomous
part of Iraq.
Further deepening the rift: The separatist Kurdistan Workers Party
(PKK), a Turkish Kurdish group viewed by Turkey, the United States
and the European Union as a terrorist organization, attacks Turkish
targets from bases inside Iraq. PKK attacks last year killed more
than 600 people, many of them Turkish soldiers, according to U.S.
figures. Under strong public pressure, Turkey has warned that its
Army could move into Iraq to root out PKK bases there.
In an effort to address the problem caused by the group’s presence in
northern Iraq, Baser and Joseph Ralston, a retired U.S. Air Force
general and former NATO supreme commander, were appointed last year
by their respective governments as special envoys for countering the
PKK.
`Unfortunately, we have not reached a point where the United States
could use its influence more effectively, but we are working on it,’
Baser said.
Ralston on March 29 briefed U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates;
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace,
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and National Security Adviser
Stephen Hadley on the latest PKK-related developments.
Baser said that under international law, Turkey reserved its right to
intervene in northern Iraq militarily to fight the PKK there.
`If the United States sends its military to places more than 10,000
kilometers away from its soil to protect its national security
interests, we also have rights,’ Baser said.
But with U.S. forces struggling in a relentless war in Iraq, Turkish
military action inside Iraqi territory is the last thing Washington
wants to see, and Ralston and other U.S. officials are working to
dissuade Ankara from going down that path. Iraqi Kurds also are
vehemently against Turkish intervention, which they tend to see as an
act against their autonomy.
Since Ralston took office last year, U.S. moves on the PKK issue
largely have been confined to pressing Iraqi Kurdish leaders to urge
the militants to refrain from violence. PKK attacks have diminished
since October, when the group declared a cease-fire, partly imposed
by harsh winter conditions in areas where it operates.
But temporary PKK inaction is not an acceptable solution for Turkey.
`We don’t want the PKK threat to continue to hover over us like the
sword of Damocles,’ Baser said. `We want the problem of the PKK’s
presence in northern Iraq to be resolved once and for all.’
How To Move Forward?
The United States says it does not have sufficient troops in Iraq to
take on the PKK physically.
Another reason for Washington to opt for a less risky PKK strategy is
that there are differences within the U.S. administration over how to
handle the issue, two U.S. diplomats said privately.
The State Department’s Europe bureau and the U.S. European Command,
which has decades of experience working with the Turkish military,
call for more radical moves against the PKK, while the State
Department’s Near East bureau and the U.S. Central Command, which are
responsible for Iraq and the Middle East, tend to disregard some of
Ankara’s worries because of their own Iraq concerns, the diplomats
said.
Thirdly, the United States views its cooperation with Iraqi Kurds as
indispensable. Iraqi Kurdish leaders rule out armed action against
the PKK, saying the group is Turkey’s problem. They say Turkey should
conduct democratic reforms to please its own Kurdish population.
Turkey’s civilian government and the powerful military also are
divided over Iraqi Kurds.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is seen as closer to cooperating
with the Kurds, but the military views Iraqi Kurdish leaders as PKK
sponsors.
Resolutions: More Trouble Ahead
The United States and Turkey also have other imminent problems. Two
nonbinding resolutions pending in the U.S. House of Representatives
and in the Senate call for official recognition of World War I-era
killings of Armenians in the Turkish Ottoman Empire as genocide.
Armenians and many U.S. lawmakers say that a forced exodus and
killings of 1.5 million Armenians between 1915 and 1923 amounted to
an organized genocide. Turkey denies it was genocide, disputes
casualty figures and says the Armenians were victims of widespread
chaos and governmental breakdown as the 600-year-old Ottoman Empire
collapsed in the years before the modern Turkish Republic was born in
1923.
Ankara has warned that congressional endorsement of the genocide
resolutions would prompt it to limit defense and military cooperation
with the United States, including the use of Turkey’s Incirlik air
base. Incirlik serves as a logistics hub for U.S. operations in Iraq
and Afghanistan.
President George W. Bush’s administration also opposes the
resolutions on grounds of U.S. national security. But a majority of
lawmakers in the Democrat-controlled Congress are believed to back
the genocide measures’ passage. It is not clear if or when the
resolutions would be brought to a vote in either chamber.
U.S. and Turkish officials and analysts agree that the Iraq issue has
the capacity to disrupt the countries’ relationship in a more lasting
way. –

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