|
Turkish
incursion into Iraqi Kurdistan, a Military Fiasco, Political
Debacle
|
|
Source : Canadian Dimension Blog | Socialist
Project • E-Bulletin No. 89 |
|
Kurd Net
does not take credit for and is not responsible for the
content of news information on this page |
|
Turkish incursion into Iraqi Kurdistan, a
Military Fiasco, Political Debacle
14.3.2008
By Sungur Savran
|
|
|
 |
March 14, 2008
The February incursion of the Turkish army into
Kurdistan region 'northern Iraq' has ended in a
terrible debacle for both U.S. imperialism and
Turkey. The two allies are at loggerheads once
again, after the thaw in their relations achieved at
the White House talks between Bush and Turkish Prime
Minister Erdogan on 5 November 2007. The Turkish
government and the army are the object of
unprecedented criticism by the bourgeois media and
also by ordinary people. And, to add insult to
injury for the USA, only three days after the
withdrawal of Turkish troops from northern Iraq on
February 29, a triumphant Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, the
President of Iran, was shown on television screens
around the world in Baghdad, presumably all smiles
for having achieved the feat of being the first
Iranian president to visit Iraq under U.S.
occupation, 29 years after the Islamic revolution
and 20 years of the deadly war between the two
countries.
The whole episode of the Turkish incursion was
played out as a miserable mismanagement of a crisis
situation by the two allies, the U.S. and Turkey.
Although the latter had been bombing the Turkey's
PKK (Kurdish Workers’ Party) bases in the north of
Iraq since 16 December last year, an incursion into
the region of Turkish combat troops
on 21 February
came as a surprise to the whole world, especially in
the midst of winter,www.ekurd.net
given the circumstances
of the extremely rugged and mountainous terrain. The
operation was greeted with unreserved support by the
USA. No lesser a figure than Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice immediately voiced “absolute
solidarity” with the Turkish war effort. The U.S.
had already extended lavish support to several
rounds of Turkish bombing efforts by providing real
time intelligence and clearance to enter Iraqi
airspace, as well as clear diplomatic approval. But
nothing that was said publicly had been as strong as
Rice’s words. Yet, only five days later, American
support seemed to disappear.
The American Rebuke
Robert Gates, the U.S. Defense Secretary said
loud and clear,
from India a day before he was to arrive in Turkey,
that Turkey should leave northern Iraq as soon as
possible. It was a message that he repeated the next
day in Ankara on at least four different occasions.
Turkish dignitaries (including the military chief of
staff) chose to play with fire and declared that the
Turkish army would leave only when its job was
finished (only to withdraw the next morning at four
a.m!). Bush also intervened from Washington, adding
his own voice to that of Gates, saying twice, in
response to reporters’ questions, that Turkey should
leave “as
soon as possible.”
It is perhaps too early to totally dissect the
dynamics behind this pitiful comedy. The evidence
shows that at the beginning the U.S. had supported
the wrong operation. Apparently, the permission
given to Turkey covered a brief incursion into
northern Iraq to inflict some damage on the PKK
before the spring, with a few hundred troops or a
thousand at most engaged in battle. It turned out
that the number of Turkish troops was much higher –
ten thousand according to some sources. As the
operation unfolded, the most influential Turkish
media declared that the objective was Kandil, the
mountains where the headquarters of the PKK are
located. The Kandil mountains are a good 200
kilometres from the point of entry of Turkish troops
into Iraq. All this raised the ire of the Iraqi
Kurds (who at the beginning had only made minor
noises), and even the central government of Iraq.
Not wishing to fall out with these allies, the U.S.
then turned around and started chiding Turkey for
having misinformed its ally and mentor. This becomes
transparent in a brief sentence in Gates’
declaration in Ankara: “The key point” he said, “is
transparency, cooperation, and communication.”
Behind this comedy of errors lies, of course, a key
contradiction of U.S. policy in Iraq. The U.S. is
trying to simultaneously entertain close relations
with Turkey, its long-time NATO ally, and its
newly-found friends Barzani and Talabani, the Iraqi
Kurdish leadership. However, Turkey, having
oppressed the Kurds on its own territory for
decades, fears any moves towards autonomy or
independence for the Kurds in other Middle Eastern
countries. So it could not but have chosen to
conceal information from Iraq,www.ekurd.net
where the Kurds are part
of the power structure, and the USA. This
deep-seated contradiction in U.S. Iraq policy had
already caused relations between the U.S. and Turkey
to chill from 2003 to 2007, aggravated by the fact
that Turkish parliament rejected on 1 March of that
year a governent motion which practically aimed to
make a Northern Front possible during the Iraq war.
The 5 November 2007 meeting at the White House had
overcome the rift, with the U.S. clearly giving in
to Turkish requests for permission to go after the
PKK in Iraqi territory, probably in return for
undisclosed commitments on the part of the Turkish
government regarding Afghanistan and/or Iraq and/or
energy transport routes (read the isolation of
Russia). However, the rapprochement between the two
countries may turn out to be extremely short-lived.
Given the immense humiliation and anger now felt by
the population in Turkey, it is impossible for this
turn of events not to inflict damage on U.S.-Turkey
relations. Both sides of course flatly deny that the
Turkish decision to withdraw had anything to do with
U.S. pressure. But not a single soul in Turkey is
prepared to believe these pious incantations. So
damage there must be. Only time will tell whether
the geniuses of crisis management on both sides wil
be able to contain the damage.
Military Fiasco
The aims of the Turkish military incursion were
never stated clearly. This led to exaggerated
expectations on the part of Turkish public opinion
that the PKK was going to be dealt a serious, if not
final, blow. Jingoistic media discourse of the
“Objective Kandil” kind further reinforced these
unrealistic expectations. This explains the bitter
disppointment felt by the Turkish public at large,
poisoned as it has been by chauvinistic propaganda
toward the Kurds for years now (on the Kurdish
question and the rights of Kurds, including
self-determination, see Bullet No. 68). It would not
be realistic to think that the Turkish army had
really set its eyes on dealing the PKK a definitive
blow. The top brass, after all, has repeatedly made
clear over time that military incursion into Iraq
will not finish off the PKK, which by most estimates
has a total of around five thousand guerrillas
inside Turkey and over the border in Iraq.
Whatever the targets originally set, the Turkish
army cannot be said to have achieved any serious
military results in this week-long incursion.
Official army figures for PKK casualties stands at
arouns 230, while admitted army casualties amount to
a mere 27. The PKK, for its part, claims that
Turkish casualties rise to 125 and its own loss is
only in the tens. No matter where the truth lies
regarding this aspect of the matter, the fact that
the Turkish military totally failed in achieveing
its own targets is clearly proved by the case of the
Zab base of the PKK. For days the Turkish army
fought a battle with guerrilla forces around this
critically important base. It was unable to conquer
it and evict the PKK. In the light of this, it
sounds surreal for the Turkish general staff to
declare in an official statement that the withdrawal
decision was taken because the military aims of the
operation had been fulfilled.
Why, one is tempted to ask, did the Turkish army
battle the guerrilla forces for days in Zab if the
taking of that base was not among the aims of the
operation? Or conversely, if the taking of the Zab
base was so important, why was it that the army
suddenly folded and left? The fact that a Turkish
helicopter was felled by the guerrillas and many
rank officers lost their lives are further evidence
of the military fiasco suffered by the Turkish army.
It was a fiasco not because the Turkish army was
defeated by the PKK, but because there was a
stalemate. Given the overwhelming striking power of
the Turkish military, second in the Middle East to
that of Israel alone, this can only be seen as a
failure, and so it will be perceived by the masses
in Turkey. The prestige of the Turkish military, an
institution much revered and feared, is probably at
its lowest ever. This episode bears marked
resemblance to the historic defeat suffered by
Israel in its attempted invasion of Lebanon in the
summer of 2006. (Ironically, Turkey is one of the
countries that had sent troops to Lebanon in the
wake of that episode to help Israel save face!)
Mounting Political Tensions
Turkey is now entering a very delicate phase. All
the contradictions that have marked Turkish social
and political life in the recent period are now
coming to a head. Alongside the tension deriving
from the Kurdish question there is the pressure of
the U.S. on Turkey to get involved in its permanent
war in the Middle East and Eurasia. The conflict
between the two wings of the Turkish bourgeoisie,
the pro-Western-secularist and the semi-Islamist, a
conflict that had been dormant under the impact of
the centrality of the Kurdish question, has again
broken out into the open with the initiative of the
government to lift the ban on the wearing of the
headscarf by university students. And, for the first
time in longer than a decade, workers’ struggles
seem to be rising, albeit timidly, as a major
economic crisis in the world economy appeares to be
developing and one that will surely hit Turkey as
well.
Last year was marked by the serious tension in
Turkey due to the prospect of the election of a
major leader of the pro-Islamic government party as
president, a process interrupted by a military
pronunciamiento but finally consummated after the
electoral victory of the government party. An
explosive year seems promised again for Turkey, next
to which the tensions of 2007 will look pale. •
Sungur Savran is editor of the newspaper Isci
Mucadelesi (Workers’ Struggle) in Istanbul, Turkey (www.iscimucadelesi.net).
Copyright, respective author or news agency,
Canadiandimension com/blog | Socialist Project •
E-Bulletin No. 89 | socialistproject.ca
The contents of this article reflect the author's
personal opinions
** Kurds are not recognized as an official minority
in Turkey and are denied rights granted to other
minority groups. Under EU pressure, Turkey recently
granted Kurds limited rights for broadcasts and
education in the Kurdish language, but critics say
the measures do not go far enough.
The use of the term "Kurdistan" is vigorously
rejected due to its alleged political implications
by the Republic of Turkey, which does not recognize
the existence of a "Turkish Kurdistan" Southeast
Turkey.
Others estimate over 40 million Kurds live in Big
Kurdistan (Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Iran, Armenia),
which covers an area as big as France, about half of
all Kurds which estimate to 20 million live in
Turkey.
Turkey is home to 25 million ethnic Kurds, a
large Turkey's Kurdish community openly sympathise
with the Kurdish PKK for a Kurdish homeland in the
country's mainly Kurdish southeast of Turkey.
Before August 2002, the Turkish government placed
severe restrictions on the use of Kurdish language,
prohibiting the language in education and broadcast
media. The Kurdish alphabet is still not recognized
in Turkey, and use of the Kurdish letters X, W, Q
which do not exist in the Turkish alphabet has led
to judicial persecution in 2000 and 2003
The Kurdish flag flown officially in Iraqi Kurdistan
but unofficially flown by Kurds in Armenia. The flag
is banned in Iran, Syria, and Turkey where flying it
is a criminal offence"
Southeastern Turkey:
North Kurdistan (
Kurdistan-Turkey)
wikipedia
Top |
Kurd Net
does not take credit for and is not responsible for the content of news
information on this page
|
|
|
® 