A FIGHT ON MANY FRONTS

Mail & Guardian Online, South Africa
Oct 30 2007

Jonathan Steele:

Turkey’s move towards a full-scale invasion of northern Iraq looks more
like a crab’s walk than a charging bull. The ruling party of moderate
Islamists has many foes to target, and not just the guerrillas of
the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the ostensible enemy.

One is the Turkish military, who are still not fully reconciled to
the current dominance and popularity of the country’s Islamists. Army
chiefs have been beating the nationalist drum for some time, seeking
to imply that the government is weak. They were not happy a few months
ago when Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said there were far more
PKK activists inside Turkey than across the border. By persuading
Parliament to give the government a blank cheque for an invasion any
time in the next year, Erdogan has won himself plenty of time to keep
the generals at bay.

Threatening an invasion of Iraq also strikes a blow at the United
States, as Turkey tries to prevent Congress from passing a resolution
denouncing the genocide of Armenians in 1915. The tactic is working,
and Congress is pulling back, fearful of undermining relations with a
country that could pull the plug on crucial support for the military
presence in Iraq.

Moreover, the hardening of the Turkish position puts pressure on
the US and the Kurdistan regional government to rein in or drive
out those PKK fighters in the mountains of northern Iraq. For Iraqi
Kurdish leaders, this is a tough proposition. No government likes to
act against its ethnic brothers, however different their ideology may
be, when they are perceived as fellow nationalists fighting for rights.

Partly because of their effort to join the European Union, Turkey’s
Islamists have made huge strides in reducing the discrimination that
Kurds in Turkey have long suffered. As a result, support for the PKK
has fallen significantly, although a new generation of activists has
emerged to renew the armed struggle after a lapse of some years.

However, Erdogan was right to say that the real battle against the
PKK has to be won inside Turkey.

The wider issue in the crisis is the question of cross-border sanctuary
for guerrilla groups, and the role of foreign governments in supporting
them. Turkey’s action in threatening an invasion of northern Iraq
highlights the double standards of other governments.

Although Turkey’s preparations for war were denounced by George Bush,
how does Ankara’s sabre-rattling differ from Washington’s threats
to attack Iran because of Tehran’s alleged military support for
anti-American insurgents inside Iraq?

What of the fact that another Kurdish guerrilla outfit, an anti-Tehran
group that operates in north-western­ Iran, uses rear bases inside
Iraqi Kurdistan just like the PKK? Some of its leaders have been
received by Bush administration officials in Washington, and are
believed to get CIA and, perhaps, Israeli support.

The simplistic "war on terror" has been used by too many governments
to obscure the fact that in many parts of the world minorities still
suffer severe repression. Whether these minorities are justified in
saying that all avenues of non-violent protest have been closed,
and they must take up arms, requires careful analysis of local
conditions. Whether, if they do resort to force, they mainly target
unarmed civilians and thereby become terrorists, also needs to be
examined before demonising them.

A Turkish invasion of Iraq would be a highly dangerous move, but
it would not be a catastrophe. The aims would be limited and no one
seriously believes that Turkish troops would be trying to occupy the
whole of northern Iraq. The invasion that has dealt the biggest blow
to stability remains the American and British attack on Iraq in 2003.

– © Guardian News & Media Ltd 2007

Jonathan Steele’s Defeat: Why They Lost Iraq is published in January

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