Concern grows at Turkey’s Iraq incursion plan
By Daniel Dombey and Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington,and Vincent
Boland in Ankara
FT
October 17 2007 03:00
Turkey’s parliament is set to give authorisation as early as today to a
large-scale incursion into northern Iraq, despite mounting
international concern about the consequences of such a move,
particularly in the US.
Yesterday, Tariq al-Hashemi, an Iraqi vice-president, flew into Ankara
to plead with Turkish officials to choose another course in their bid
to crack down on the Kurdish separatists of the PKK.
"Approval does not mean that an operation will be undertaken
immediately," Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkish prime minister, told his
MPs ahead of today’s debate, which is expected to end in a vote to
authorise an incursion.
He added Turkey would "act with common sense and determination when the
time is right".
But the Bush administration is worried that a large- scale Turkish
military operation in Iraq could spiral out of control, leading to a
possible clash between Turkish and Kurdish government soldiers.
At the same time it is seeking to limit the fallout from the vote last
week by a US Congressional committee to denounce the killings of
Armenians during the Ottoman empire as genocide, amid fears that Turkey
will reduce logistical support for US troops in Iraq if the bill is
approved by the full House of Representatives.
"The Turkey-US relationship is becoming a victim of the tensions
between Congress and the administration: the relationship between the
Democrats and the White House is now so bad that it really limits what
the administration can do," said Bulent Aliriza, director of the Turkey
programme at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in
Washington.
He added that the Bush administration was worried that a large scale
Turkish intervention could rapidly turn into "a conflict between the
US’s strategic ally, Turkey, and its tactical ally, the Kurds".
"We are trying to promote the idea that regional stability is in
everyone’s interest," said a US government official. On being asked
whether Washington was worried about the possibility of clashes between
Turkish and Kurdish government forces he added: "There is definitely
that angle."
In the meantime, Washington’s call for Turkey to co-operate with Iraq
and the US on a joint anti- PKK push has been hit by the recent
resignation of Joseph Ralston, the retired US general who had been
appointed to co-ordinate such an effort.
Mr Erdogan said yesterday that the only target of any Turkish military
operation would be the PKK.
But US officials are also worried that other countries could be drawn
into a conflict and have noted recent clashes between Iranian forces
and Kurdish rebels based in north-east Iraq.
Speaking in Brussels yesterday Antonio Guterres, United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees said he was "extremely concerned" about the
possibility of conflict on the Turkish-Iraq border.
Still, Peter Rodman, a former senior Bush administration Pentagon
official, argued that from the US standpoint it would be preferable
that Turkey sent troops into northern Iraq rather than cut off crucial
military supply lines because of the Armenian genocide resolution.
"Maybe that is the only solution," said Mr Rodman, now at the Brookings
Institution. "If the US is unable to deal with it [the PKK], and the
Iraqis are unwilling to deal with them, what else do you tell the
Turks? There may be ways to go after the PKK and accomplish something,
whereas strangling our logistical lifeline doesn’t help them with the
PKK and it just creates a monumental problem."
The Pentagon is concerned that Ankara could react to the House passage
of the Armenian resolution by limiting, or denying, it access to
Turkish air space. The US military relies heavily on Turkey, which
hosts a US air base at Incirlik, to transport supplies, fuel and
equipment into Iraq and Afghanistan.
Robert Gates, US defence secretary, said last week that 70 per cent of
the materials the US sends by air to the war zones went through Turkish
air space, while 30 per cent of fuel shipments went through the country.
In an attempt to warn US lawmakers about the damage the resolution
could cause, the Pentagon has stressed that 95 per cent of the heavily
armoured MRAP vehicles designed to protect soldiers from roadside
bombs, the biggest killer of troops in Iraq, are shipped through Turkey.
Pentagon planners are preparing contingency plans. While the US could
find alternative routes – as it had to do after it was evicted from
Uzkekistan several years ago – it would prove costly and time consuming.
Omar Taspinar, an expert on Turkey at the National War College, said
the US would have to look for alternative air routes in the Gulf,
including Qatar and Kuwait, should Turkey cut off access to its air
space.
Additional reporting by Laura Dixon in Brussels