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Hitting the Kurds from All Sides
28.12.2007
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December
28, 2007
In 1995, the Turkish army invaded Kurdistan
'northern Iraq', sending some 35,000 soldiers across
the border to destroy the guerilla infrastructure of
the Turkey's Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) a militant
group made up of Turkish Kurds that had found refuge
in the lawless mountain region. Operation Steel, as
it was called, killed over 500 militants, but still
the PKK survived to fight another day. In early
1997, the Turks sent in another 30,000 soldiers —
this time as part of Operation Hammer — to finish
the job. They didn't. The Turks had to go in again
later that year with Operation Dawn.
This month the Turks launched yet another operation
against the PKK, and there is little to suggest that
it will be any more effective than the others. So
far 300 Turkish commandoes crossed briefly into
Iraq, while Turkey has staged three air strikes,
including one Wednesday. Turkey claims to have
attacked some 200 PKK locations,www.ekurd.net
and killed hundreds of
militants. A PKK fighter said that just five of the
group's members had been killed. Whatever the true
figure, the operation would seem to be a minor
chapter in Turkey's seemingly never-ending civil war
with radicals among its oppressed Kurdish minority
population, who took up arms in the 1980's. |
Kurdish villagers walk through rubble from a Turkish
air attack in the Qlatooka village in Kurdistan
region, near Iraq's Kurdistan border with Turkey, on
Sunday, December 16, 2007 |
This time however there
are some important differences. Turkey isn't
invading the lawless hinterland of a pariah nation
(Saddam's Iraq) but a region that not too long ago
was considered the one relative success of the
American project in Iraq. The United States — which
controls Iraqi airspace — tried to forestall a
Turkish invasion, but eventually caved into Turkish
demands and agreed to a limited incursion.
The fact that Turkey was ready to risk alienating
its American ally for an operation with little
chance of strategic success is a testament to the
uproar by the Turkish public for action against the
PKK. But it is also a troubling sign of the role
that Turkey will play in Iraq as American power
recedes.
Turkey has long been hostile to the emerging power
of Iraq's Kurdish minority, located primarily in
Kurdistan region in 'northern Iraq'. Concerned that
Kurds might take control of the oil rich Iraqi city
of Kirkuk,www.ekurd.net
Turkey inserted itself
into Iraq's domestic political problems by dubiously
claiming stewardship of Kirkuk's minority Turkoman
population (with whom ethnic Turks share a distant
Central Asian past and little else.)
More recently, Turkey has demanded that Iraq's Kurds
rid northern Iraq of the PKK, a job that the
government-sanctioned Kurdish peshmerga forces are
unable to do. The peshmerga are currently
overstretched in Baghdad and Mosul trying to keep
Arab insurgents from entering Kurdistan. (Iraqi
Kurds tried to expel the PKK in the 1990's, but,
like the Turkish army, they failed.)
Now, Iraqi Kurdistan leaders say that Turkey's
unwillingness to open peace talks with the PKK, and
its adherence to failed military policies, is a sign
that Turkey is using the PKK as excuse to threaten
Iraq's Kurds — and to scare them from even thinking
about declaring an independent state. Whatever
Turkey's intentions, the latest Turkish operation
has reminded the Kurds of Iraq just how much their
newfound safety and autonomy depends on American
protection.
Kurdish leaders in Iraq have been relatively subdued
since the Turkish operations began, acquiescing
perhaps to the fickle will of their American
masters. They know better than anyone that, without
American protection, it's doubtful their hostile
neighbors — not just Turkey, but also Iran and
Syria, which have restive Kurdish minority
populations of their own — would limit themselves to
a few air strikes.
time com
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