ERDOGAN FACES AN IMPOSSIBLE CHOICE
FT
October 22 2007 20:26
A Turkish attack on northern Iraq to end cross-border raids by the
rebel Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) is beginning to look politically
unstoppable after this weekend’s attack on troops in south-east Turkey,
the worst in a decade.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister, is under intolerable
pressure that will test his skill and judgment to the limit. The
PKK attacks have outraged Turks, emboldened the electorally defeated
ultranationalists and put Turkey’s powerful army back on the front
foot after a string of setbacks in its cold war with Mr Erdogan’s
neo-Islamist Justice and Development party.
The PKK attempt to revive the insurgency in the south-east, the
heartland of Turkey’s 15m Kurds, comes just as Ankara’s alliance
with Washington is nearing breaking point. Turkey is the main supply
route for American forces in Iraq, despite its opposition to the US
invasion. Turkey says it will end all military co-operation if the US
Congress proceeds with a vote defining as genocide the Ottoman Turks’
massacres of Armenians during the first world war.
The often justified perception in Turkey of European Union bad faith in
its accession negotiations adds to the feeling of a beleaguered nation.
Yet, for all that, an invasion of Iraqi Kurdistan is a terrible idea.
First, Mr Erdogan’s government has made modest but tangible progress
reconciling Turkey’s Kurdish minority, which will be vaporised by
all-out war with the PKK.
Second, previous big incursions of Turkish troops, most recently
in 1995, 1997 and 2001, failed to dislodge the rebels from the
near-impregnable Kandil mountains.
Third, a Turkish invasion would destroy the relative peace of Iraqi
Kurdistan, trigger the redeployment of Kurdish peshmerga forces on
which the US depends in central Iraq, suck in Iraq’s other meddlesome
neighbours such as Iran and Saudi Arabia, and drive another nail into
the coffin of US-Turkish relations. Mr Erdogan knows this.
He has twice been given the parliamentary authorisation he was voted
last week to go in hard against the PKK. So far, he has declined
to use it. He is right to see diplomacy as a more realistic weapon,
but to avoid an invasion his allies must get him a real result.
In their own interest, Iraq’s Kurds need to curb the cult-like PKK. US
forces, stretched as they are across Iraq, need to act against the PKK
– not least to preserve one of their most important military alliances.
The Iraq neighbours conference Turkey is hosting in Istanbul will
give all parties a chance to iron this out. It will probably be the
last one.