TURKEY’S THREAT OF USING FORCE AGAINST THE KURDS IN NORTHERN IRAQ COULD OVERTURN A FRAGILE BALANCE
By Mahir Ali
Newsline, Pakistan
Nov 13 2007
Fuel to the Fire
There is one part of Iraq that has largely been spared the agony
that has engulfed the remainder of the country in recent years:
the northern area known as the Kurdish Autonomous Region (KAR). The
KAR did not face an American invasion in 2003 chiefly because it was
effectively removed from Baghdad’s sphere of influence in the wake
of the first Gulf war 12 years earlier.
Since the early 1990s, no-fly zones policed by US and British
forces prevented Saddam Hussein from having his way with Iraq’s
hitherto beleaguered Kurdish minority. Needless to say, the Kurds
were profoundly grateful. And, not surprisingly, they are the only
segment of Iraq’s population that has collaborated wholeheartedly with
the occupying armies. The quid pro quo has included Jalal Talabani,
the leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), being ensconced
as the president of Iraq, while his formal rival Massoud Barzani,
head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), leads the KAR regional
government.
It may be an exaggeration to suggest that the KAR has thrived in the
past four years, but it has undoubtedly been far better off than
the rest of Iraq in economic terms and, above all, it has enjoyed
peace. Last month it became clear that this peace was unlikely to last
much longer, after the Turkish parliament overwhelmingly authorised
the government in Ankara to invade northern Iraq.
The provocation took the shape of increased attacks by the Kurdish
Workers’ Party (PKK), a Turkey-based rebel organisation, some of
whose fighters have taken refuge in mountains across the border.
This isn’t by any means a novelty: the PKK has been a thorn in Turkey’s
side for at least 20 years, and in the past, hot pursuit has often
involved incursions by Turkish troops into Iraqi terrain.
However, similar action today could have more serious connotations,
not least because Iraq is under US occupation.
Although the US, like Turkey (and, for that matter, the European
Union), has designated the PKK a terrorist organisation, Kurds of
the Talabani-Barzani variety are among the Americans’ closest allies
in a generally hostile part of the world. So are, for that matter,
the Turks. Turkey is considered a crucial member of NATO and, perhaps
even more significantly, serves as the conduit for logistical support
to the occupation forces in Iraq.
Even a restricted regional war on the northern periphery of Iraq
would be a severe embarrassment for the US. Hence the concerted
efforts by the State Department and other sections of the Bush
administration to stave off an armed confrontation. The attempt to
appease Turkey included the demise of a congressional resolution aimed
at recognising genocide against Armenians by the Ottoman empire in
1915, an extraordinarily sensitive issue among Turkish nationalists.
In an echo of that attitude, most Turks are in denial about the crimes
committed in recent decades by their state against the Kurds. The
focus is entirely on violent activities – including terrorist attacks
on civilians – by outfits such as the PKK, but there is almost no
acknowledgement of the repression against Kurds and their culture,
which elicited such a response. There is a parallel here with the
Israeli attitude towards Palestinians. And, not surprisingly, ties
between the Israeli and Turkish states have long been cordial, and on
occasion collaborative. It has strongly been rumoured, for instance,
that Mossad helped Turkish military intelligence in capturing PKK
leader Abdullah Ocalan in Kenya in 1999.
Ocalan was condemned to death by a Turkish court, but the sentence
was subsequently commuted to life imprisonment – chiefly because
Turkey is keen to be accepted as a member by the European Union (EU)
and could ill afford further blemishes on its chequered human rights
record. The EU attraction may also play a role in averting a serious
conflagration this time around.
There were also indications that the government of Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan wasn’t particularly keen on a military adventure, but
came under strong pressure from public opinion as well as the nation’s
powerful army, which has always detested Erdogan and his Justice and
Development Party (AKP) because of their Islamist past. It is therefore
possible that the vituperative rhetoric from Erdogan and President
Abdullah Gul – another AKP stalwart – was intended in part to gain
themselves some breathing space. Although they frequently threatened
war, they simultaneously made an effort to give diplomacy a chance,
and this included a vigorous dialogue with Baghdad and Washington.
The trouble is, neither Baghdad nor Washington is in a position to do
much about the PKK. There are no Iraqi government forces in the KAR,
and any influx would be deeply resented and quite possibly resisted by
all Kurds. The US can hardly afford to deploy troops from other parts
of Iraq to the Kurdish border region, given the security situation in
the rest of the country. Nor does it have any inclination to alienate
the Kurds. It has leaned on Talabani and Barzani to take action against
the PKK, but neither of them has an appetite for internecine Kurdish
strife. And doubts were anyhow expressed about the ability of their
peshmerga forces to take on the PKK. Hence the two presidents issued
appeals requesting the PKK to give up violence and abandon its bases,
but also insisted that the question of handing over any rebels –
"or even a Kurdish cat" – to Turkey did not arise.
On the face of it, there is little love lost between the PUK and
the KDP on the one hand and the PKK on the other: the latter’s
propaganda, for instance, contains references to scientific socialism
and derides those who have chosen to collaborate with the world’s
largest capitalist power. On the other hand, most Kurds, regardless
of their ideological bent or alliances of convenience, continue to
nurture dreams of an independent Kurdistan. This is by no means an
unjust aspiration: at 45 million, they constitute the world’s largest
ethnic group without a nation-state. Although the PKK is purportedly
no longer a separatist organisation and seeks no more than equal rights
within Turkey for its Kurdish population, there can be little question
that Kurds everywhere have been enormously buoyed by the establishment
of the KAR and look upon it as the nucleus of a future Kurdistan.
Turkey, which does not recognise the autonomous region yet has invested
heavily in its infrastructure, is well aware of the dilemma posed by
the possible disintegration of Iraq. Its concerns are shared to some
extent by Iran and Syria, both of which host Kurdish minorities.
There is, in this context, an interesting anomaly that deserves
at least mention. The Party for Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK), the
similarities of whose platform with the PKK extend to its allegiance
to Ocalan, happens also to be engaged in very similar activities. Yet
not only has the PJAK failed to attract the terrorist tag, it also
keeps in touch with US officials, and its leader is said to have
visited Washington. It owes these privileges to the simple fact that
its operations are directed against a different Iraqi neighbour,
namely Iran.
Such double standards are, of course, all too common in US foreign
policy. At the same time, the Americans ought to be well aware that
in the wake of extended Turkish incursions into Iraq, Iran may well
be tempted to follow suit. In which case, would Syria stay out of
the fray?
The Kurdish question has rarely attracted much attention on the
international level, even though it’s not hard to see that, whatever
one’s opinion of their methods, the various Kurdish groups that have
engaged over the decades in a struggle for autonomy or independence
have shared a broad cause that is neither unnatural nor particularly
unreasonable. In an ideal world, it would have been possible for the
four states with Kurdish minorities to agree on ceding appropriate
proportions of their territory to contribute towards the creation of
a coherent Kurdistan, thereby righting one of the innumerable wrongs
perpetrated by colonial mapmakers.
Unfortunately, that is not how nation-states behave in the real
world. Instead, each of the countries, under various regimes, has
exploited the Kurds for its own purposes while steadily denying their
aspirations towards independent nationhood and, in the process, often
resorting to outrageous levels of repression. Saddam Hussein was a
major culprit in this respect, but by no means the only one. It would,
meanwhile, also be unwise to overlook the fact that the American
alliance with Iraqi Kurds is, from Washington’s point of view,
intended primarily to serve strategic US interests. Had it not been
for Turkey’s inflexibility, the US may actually have been inclined
towards supporting the establishment of Kurdistan in some form,
provided the dominant Kurdish leadership was willing to pledge its
allegiance and to keep at bay the semi-Marxist tendencies of the
various groups that have over the decades spearheaded the Kurds’
struggle for self-determination.
It has hitherto been argued, however, that a potential Kurdistan,
inevitably landlocked, would be economically unviable. The KAR
administration is currently seeking to redress this problem: it has
pinned its hopes on incorporating into the autonomous entity the
neighbouring region of Kirkuk, which holds about 40% of Iraq’s crude
oil reserves. The area is said to have been depopulated of Kurds under
Saddam, who encouraged Arabs from central and southern Iraq to settle
there. The trend is now being reversed, with monetary incentives,
by the KAR regime, ahead of a referendum on the future of Kirkuk that
has been written into occupied Iraq’s constitution.
The prospect of Kirkuk’s incorporation into the KAR is likely to be
opposed, and quite possibly resisted, by Iraqi Arabs.
The opposition from Turkey will be no less vehement: Ankara is
disinclined to endorse any development that contributes to the
viability of an independent Kurdish state.
Turkey, of course, faces many problems of its own, not the least of
which is a legacy of nationalism that all too frequently manifests
itself in unpalatable forms. Somewhat ironically, the ex-Islamists
under Erdogan represent a relatively moderate trend in this respect,
and it is not surprising that the AKP’s comfortable majority is based
in part on a substantial Kurdish vote. However, the influence of the
secular but profoundly nationalistic military on political affairs
has not so far diminished appreciably. This appears to be one of the
main driving forces between the government’s belligerent rhetoric,
and by the end of October, there were an estimated 100,000 Turkish
troops amassed on the border with Iraq, ostensibly preparing to take
on no more than 3,000 PKK guerrillas.
This is clearly a case of a historically complex situation being
further complicated by the overwhelmingly disastrous US occupation
of Iraq. Whatever shape events may take in the short term, it is
extremely difficult, in the given circumstances, to envisage a happy
ending for any of the parties concerned.
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