TURKEY BEFORE THE GATES OF HELL IN KURDISTAN
By Youssef Ibrahim

New York Sun, NY
Oct 29 2007

Welcome to the latest regional war in the Middle East – Turkey’s
contemplated invasion of northern Iraq. Among other things, this
latest Turkish aggression, preceded years ago by the invasion of
Cyprus, threatens to:

~U Send energy prices through the roof. With oil prices already at
a record $90 a barrel, they will easily keep setting new highs as
winter arrives in Europe and America.

~U Set back American military and political efforts to stabilize an
already convulsed Middle East, inviting even more meddling by Iran
and Syria.

~U Bring doom upon the Turkish invaders, who failed for more than
30 years to subjugate their Kurdish minority of 7 million, or 10%
of Turkey’s population. Now they would expand the fight to all 25
million Kurds, who share the mountainous border areas of Iraq, Iran,
and Syria. These well-armed Kurds live in a contiguous area the size
of Germany and Britain combined.

The distance separating a military skirmish by a pompous Turkish
army and the emancipation of what in effect is the largest minority
in the Middle East united by language, culture, and militias is
deceptively short.

Targeted "Kurdistan" is no picnic. It is the size of Austria,
economically prosperous, and endowed with huge oil resources. It has
thrived as a Western-protected haven since the Gulf War of 1991 and
functions as territory where America maintains extensive strategic
bases of intelligence gathering and army operations. Even more
important, those Kurds are America’s only true friends and allies
inside Iraq.

Decades of aggression by both the Turkish and Iraqi armies over the
past 30 years, destroying 10,000 Kurdish villages, have failed to
extinguish the Kurds’ quest for identity. Saddam Hussein went so far
as to rain chemical and biological weapons on innocent civilians in
Kurdish villages. Yet they remain, stronger than ever.

Today Turkey’s real goals are what they have been for decades –
Iraq’s northern oil. The region is already exporting some 750,000
barrels a day via a pipeline to the Turkish port of Ceyhan on the
Mediterranean Sea. Before the American invasion, it exported nearly
1.5 million barrels daily, and there is a lot more from where this
comes. Turkey wants to own it instead of merely transporting it.

This would not be the first Turkish grab for hegemony in the Middle
East. Turkish troops invaded Cyprus on July 15, 1974, using the
pretext of defending the Turkish minority of the island against its
Greek majority. They are still occupying an independent pro-Western
democracy. Indeed, the Turkish beachhead on Cyprus has been the main
reason the European Union has been dragging its heels on Turkish
membership. The impending invasion of Iraq will close that door
permanently.

Even as a NATO member, Turkey has done little except to subvert Western
strategies, including its flat rejection of access for American and
British troops into Iraq prior to the invasion in 2003.

What would happen should Israel be subjected to a Syrian-Iranian attack
and should America ask our Islamist Turkish allies for permission to
use their territory to help?

When a few weeks ago Congress proposed a resolution to commemorate
the genocide by Turks that, starting in 1915, massacred 1.5 million
Armenian Christians, the government of Prime Minister Erdogan
threatened to halt shipments of fuel and materiel to American troops
in Iraq.

After the end of World War I, in the Treaty of Sevre of 1920, the
major powers promised Kurds their own nation in the Middle East as part
of the spoils from the defeated Ottoman Empire. Predictably, Turkey,
Syria, and Iran, along with most Arab countries of the region, balked
at the suggestion of founding a non-Arab state. Yet for centuries the
Kurds endured, united by language, tradition, culture, fighting ethos,
and strong militias. Above all they have a dream, one that a wayward
Turkish incursion in Iraq may finally bring about – an independent
Kurdish state. America should support the creation of such a state,
as it sorely needs countries it can claim as friends in that region.