KurdistanObserver.com
Why Turkey Is Wary Of Kurdish Guerrillas Trap
October 24, 2007
Turks broadly support a strike into Iraq, but that could play
into the hands of the PKK.
By Scott Peterson | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
Istanbul, Turkey- As Turkey sends military convoys to its southeast border with
Iraq, diplomatic efforts are intensifying to head off a cross-border incursion
aimed at crushing the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
On Tuesday, Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan traveled to Baghdad and Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was in London to increase pressure on US and Iraqi
forces in northern Iraq to halt a surge of attacks that peaked Sunday with the
most lethal guerrilla strike in a decade. Twelve soldiers were killed and eight
went missing.
There's broad public support and parliamentary approval for a cross-border
attack, but analysts say that a Turkish decision to invade would ensnare it in a
PKK strategy aimed at provoking just such an invasion. A Turkish offensive would
bring NATO-ally Turkey face-to-face with US and Iraqi Kurdish forces, as well as
the PKK. It could also destabilize northern Iraq – the one area of Iraq
relatively calm since the 2003 US invasion – and embroil its troops in a
quagmire.
"The PKK wants Turkey to engage in full-scale, extensive warfare – not just with
the PKK in northern Iraq, but with the Iraqi Kurdish [forces] and to draw in the
US and other foreign powers," says Fadi Hakura, a Turkey expert at the Chatham
House think tank in London.
One purpose, says Mr. Hakura, would be to "reenergize their popular base" which
has "been on a rapid decline" in southeast Turkey, where ethnic Kurds are
broadly sympathetic to PKK aims, but often oppose violent methods.
That PKK strategy is "based on the assumption that the Turkish government is
trigger-happy, nationalistic, and willing to take a knee-jerk reaction," says
Mr. Hakura. "But the Erdogan government is far more calculating ... and has
indicated a clear preference for diplomacy over military action."
Despite the build up of some 60,000 Turkish troops – and repeated assurances
from Ankara that Turkey will limit its attacks to PKK targets – so far generals
are pushing diplomacy, aware that 24 cross-border operations in past decades
have failed to destroy the militants.
Already the crisis has grabbed the attention of Washington, which Turkey accuses
of not doing enough to thwart the PKK. President George Bush on Monday contacted
Turkish and Iraqi leaders, asking Turkey for restraint, and Iraq for action
against the PKK, which the US, European Union, and Turkey all label a terrorist
group.
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd and leader of one of the two main Kurdish
parties in northern Iraq, said Monday that the PKK would declare a cease-fire.
The PKK denied declaring a new cease-fire, and said one from June still held.
PKK attacks have killed 42 people in the past month, two-thirds of them
soldiers. The Turkish military said its counterattack on Sunday against 200 PKK
fighters who had come across the border killed 34.
The PKK strategy of drawing Turkey across the border has "failed," because
Turkey is not likely to "go into Iraq at this moment," says Seyfi Tashan,
director of the Foreign Policy Institute at Bilkent University in Ankara.
Instead, Turkey will step up pressure on the US as well as Iraqi Kurdish leader
Massoud Barzani, who Ankara believes has done most to provide a haven for the
PKK. The two Kurdish leaders say their forces are incapable of forcibly removing
the PKK, with Mr. Talabani noting a local sympathy: "We will not hand any
Kurdish man to Turkey, even a Kurdish cat."
Turkish closure of the border would deeply hurt Iraq's land-locked Kurdish
areas, but would also take a large toll on Turkish traders. Turkish
parliamentarians voted 507-19 last week to give authority for a cross-border
push, with all 19 votes against coming from pro-Kurdish deputies who favor
diplomacy instead.
"We have to have a Damocles sword – that has to be kept, not only for the PKK,
but also for PKK supporters like Barzani," says Mr. Tashan, recalling that a
threat of war against Syria in 1998 forced Damascus to expel PKK leader Abdullah
Ocalan, who was later arrested in Kenya and flown to Turkey. "We will let them
see it, that they have to ... get rid of the PKK."
The rebels say they will not be dislodged, but suggested Monday that a
diplomatic solution was possible. "If the Turkish state stops its attacks, then
increased tensions will be replaced with a combat-free environment," said a PKK
statement. "Our movement and people have the strength to defend [but] we prefer
to solve the problems by democratic and peaceful ways rather than armed
struggle."
The pro-Kurdish Firat news agency quoted a senior PKK commander, Bahoz Erdal,
saying that the group held the eight Turkish soldiers as "hostages in the hands
of our forces."
Turkish artillery and planes have already been striking northern Iraq, and on
Sunday aircraft hit 63 targets in hot pursuit after the raid, according to the
military. The purpose of a cross-border operation would be to deny the PKK
sanctuary. "We may conduct a joint operation with the US against the PKK in
northern Iraq," Erdogan told a Turkish newspaper.
The Chicago Tribune reported that despite previous resistance to the idea, US
air or cruise missile strikes are now being considered. "Now the Turks are at
the end of their rope, and our risk calculus is changing," the Tribune quoted a
US official familiar with Bush's call to Turkish President Abdullah Gul on
Monday.
But such a response is not likely to sit well Iraqi Kurds, even though Barzani's
peshmerga militia struck a deal with Turkey in the late 1990s to take on the
PKK. A further irony, experts say, is how the PKK's tactics have changed as a
result of the insurgency in Iraq.
"They have learned, they have adopted very closely the lessons from the Iraqi
Sunni insurgents," says Hakura at Chatham House. In the past the PKK staged
large attacks with between 200 and 500 fighters against police stations and
military installations.
Now "they are using hit-and-run tactics, small cells, mines, ambushes, C-4
explosives, and improvised explosive devices," or IEDs," says Hakura. "Almost
half the Turkish military victims this year were killed by mines, rather than in
combat."
Source: Council on Foreign Relations, GlobalSecurity.org, The Political Handbook
of the World, Reuters
