Turkey Weighs Cross-border Attack on Kurdish
Guerrillas
By
Vincen Boland
Financial Times
Feb 1,
2007
Turkey made a decisive contribution to the Iraq
war nearly four years ago when the parliament in Ankara rejected a US request to
allow an invasion from the north.
The diplomatic fallout is still casting a
shadow over the US-Turkish relationship. Now Turkey could be about to make a
second dramatic contribution.
Amid constant bloody clashes between Turkish
troops and PKK Kurdish separatist guerrillas operating out of northern Iraq,
Ankara is weighing up a cross-border incursion to attack PKK bases. Turkey, its
political leaders insist, has the right and the determination to eliminate
threats to its territory wherever they come from.
General Yasar Buyukanit, chief of the general
staff, is expected to set out Turkey's concerns over Iraq when he visits
Washington later this month. One possible outcome intended to guard against a
unilateral Turkish intervention would be a joint anti-PKK military operation
with US and Iraqi forces, says an analyst who asked not to be named.
Turkey is also becoming alarmed by what it
claims is electoral and demographic gerrymandering by Iraqi Kurds in Kirkuk, the
oil capital of Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq. Ankara fears that Kurdish
control of Kirkuk would give the Iraqi Kurds the economic basis for independence
if Iraq were to break up.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's prime minister,
and other Turkish leaders have warned repeatedly that the gerrymandering
threatens to make a fait accompli of a referendum on Kirkuk's status later this
year that Turkey will not tolerate. Turkey is increasingly identifying with the
Turkmen minority in the city, which Ankara believes is being ill-treated by the
Kurds.
Some see the danger of fighting erupting in
Kirkuk. This would complicate US plans to "surge" troops into Baghdad, commented
Glen Howard, head of the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington security think-tank.
"The Turks are now signaling that they are
going to arm the Iraqi Turkmen as the Kurds refuse to back off on the [Kirkuk]
referendum," he commented.
Some of the talk in Turkey is election-year
rhetoric: no Turkish politician ever lost votes by being tough on Kurdish
separatism.
But diplomats and analysts say the debate is
also serious. A military strike into northern Iraq -- with or without the
consent of the US -- is militarily and politically possible, perhaps even
probable, some believe.
A senior retired Turkish diplomat, with
extensive knowledge of the political and military calculations involved in such
a decision, said military planning was not as far advanced as public statements
from politicians suggested.
"This is not an easy decision to take, even
though we are entitled by international law to undertake such a mission," the
diplomat said on condition of anonymity.
"We have to ask ourselves whether it would
achieve our objectives, would it satisfy public opinion, what impact it would
have on our international relations."
The debate among the Turkish leadership, he
said, "is hot, but the thinking is not yet at that stage [of military
intervention]".
In 2006, the US and Turkish governments each
appointed a retired general -- Gen Joseph Ralston of the US and Gen Edip Baser
of Turkey -- as "PKK co-ordinators" to develop a strategy to target the
separatists in northern Iraq. But last month Mr Erdogan branded the initiative
"a failure", without quite specifying how it had failed.
The two generals met senior politicians in
Ankara this week and the initiative appears to be still on track.
Mr Erdogan's remark nonetheless indicated
Turkey's impatience with the apparent impunity with which the PKK is acting and
the inability of the overstretched US and Iraqi military to crack down on the
separatists in what is Iraq's most stable region.
Turkey is home to some 15m ethnic Kurds, some
of whom openly sympathise with the PKK. Turkey fought a long war against the PKK
in the 1980s and 1990s, which cost at least 35,000 lives. It was after that
conflict petered out and its leadership was captured that the PKK disappeared
into the Iraqi mountains to launch periodic attacks on Turkish soil. Clashes
between the Turkish military and the PKK in south-eastern Turkey last year
killed scores of Turkish soldiers.
Nicholas Burns, US undersecretary of state,
said in Ankara recently that the US had "enormous sympathy" with Turkey's stance
on the PKK, but he suggested that Ankara needed to work more closely with
Baghdad rather than undertake unilateral moves. Diplomats say Ankara should be
spreading largesse among the Kurdish communities. instead of threatening to
disrupt the referendum process in Kirkuk. Others say Turkey's entire Iraq
strategy -- such as it is -- will fail unless it wins the hearts and minds of
the Iraqi Kurds.
Sahin Alpay, an academic and commentator, wrote
this week: "The most effective way for Ankara to achieve its objectives in Iraq
is to win the trust and friendship of the Iraqi Kurds."
Additional reporting Guy Dinmore in
Washingto
