Turkey embraces
'hot pursuit' in Kurdistan (northern Iraq)
Could another front be opening in the Iraq war? Over recent weeks,
some 200,000 Turkish troops, backed by tanks and helicopter gunships,
have massed along the mountainous border with Iraq. Trucks passing
from Turkey, ferrying the imported goods and foodstuffs that are the
lifeblood of the Kurdish economy, have slowed from 1,000 a day to
just a couple of hundred. The Turkish military says its troops are
there only to prevent armed insurgents of the Kurdish PKK rebel
group from crossing into Turkey from their bases on Iraq's Kandil
Mountain. But last week, according to angry Foreign Ministry
officials in Baghdad, Turkish commandos briefly crossed 15
kilometers into Iraqi territory in pursuit of PKK rebels—a move that
could signal dangerous new frictions to come.
Compared with the rest of the country, Iraqi Kurdistan has been a
haven of stability—still subject to insurgent bombings, but
generally free of the kind of sectarian violence that has racked
Baghdad and other major cities in recent weeks. But tensions are
rising. Shia militiamen from Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army have begun
moving into oil-rich Kirkuk, claimed as part of Kurdistan. In
neighboring Iran last month some 10,000 troops attacked PKK-affiliated
rebels who defy Tehran's rule in the region. And the Turks have
grown increasingly frustrated with the 5,000 guerrillas holed up at
Kandil. Over the last two months, the PKK and its political
affiliates have stepped up violence inside Turkey to levels not seen
in a decade. At least eight government troops were killed in a
series of ambushes in Turkey's southeast; two bombs linked to the
PKK were planted in Istanbul and, last month, 14 civilians were
killed as Kurdish cities all over the southeast erupted in violence.
Ankara is losing patience with the United States, which has promised
to deal with the PKK problem. Last week Gen. Hilmi Ozkok, chief of
the politically powerful General Staff, claimed that Turkey had the
right to defend itself under the United Nations Charter, hinting
strongly that the military was seriously considering hot-pursuit
cross-border raids. (Before Saddam was toppled in 2003, Turkish
troops used to cross the border regularly chasing the PKK, often
with the connivance of local Iraqi Kurdish groups which had their
own differences with the PKK.) And Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah
Gul told U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in Ankara last
week to try to defuse the crisis, that "we expect the U.S. to do
more and to be more active." In reply, Rice warned that any
cross-border operations would have "a destabilizing effect" on
Iraq's fragile security.
Washington is caught between two allies—NATO member Turkey, its
closest friend in the Muslim world, and the Iraqi Kurds, its closest
ally within Iraq. By rights, of course, dealing with the PKK "should
be the responsibility of the Iraqi government," as a senior Iraqi
official puts it, not wishing to speak publicly on security matters.
"We will not allow any PKK attacks on [Turkey] from our soil. But
the limits on the central government are obvious. According to one
U.S. official, also not wishing to be quoted on such a sensitive
topic, Washington has been trying to pressure Iraq's Kurds to crack
down on the PKK themselves, before Ankara steps up its campaign.
U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad has several points of leverage. One
is that the Kurds are desperate to have a more or less permanent
American military base on their territory as insurance against a
future anti-Kurdish regime in Baghdad. Another is that the Kurds
will need U.S. help to contain any Shia designs on oil-rich Kirkuk.
Also, they need Washington's support in any deal on the parceling
out of the country's future oil revenues.
So, the big question is why the Iraqi Kurds aren't cracking down on
the PKK insurgents, with whom, after all, they once used to clash.
One reason is that, under Saddam, the precarious autonomy of Iraq's
Kurds was largely dependent on the good will of Ankara. That was
ample incentive to keep the PKK in check. But today, Iraqi Kurds are
much more confident. For the first time, they have their own nation
in all but name—and are thus more willing to support the
nationalistic aspirations of their 14 million countrymen living in
Turkey. In words widely interpreted in Ankara as a veiled threat to
support a Kurdish insurgency inside Turkey if the cross-border raids
continue, Massoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdistan Regional
Government, warned last week that if Turkey tries "to stop our
people from profiting or progressing," then Turkey's own "stability
and security" would suffer. That kind of talk is likely to reinforce
Turkey's determination to stamp out the PKK once and for all—and
take their war inside Iraq if necessary.
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