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Turkey Before the Gates Of Hell in
Kurdistan 29.10.2007
By Youssef Ibrahim |
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October
29, 2007
Welcome to the latest regional war in the Middle
East — Turkey's contemplated invasion of Kurdistan
region 'northern Iraq'.
Among other things, this latest Turkish aggression,
preceded years ago by the invasion of Cyprus,
threatens to:
• 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.
• Set back American military and political efforts
to stabilize an already convulsed Middle East,
inviting even more meddling by Iran and Syria.
• 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.
www.ekurd.net
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.
nysun com
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