Turkish Election Fever Fuels Kurdistan-Iraq Threats
By Gareth Jones
ANKARA, -- Reuters- Jan 19, 2007- From Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan down,
Turkey's politicians are threatening military intervention in Kurdistan
(northern Iraq) to crush Turkish Kurdish rebels hiding there if, as seems sure,
US forces fail to tackle them.
Most analysts link the threats, which are not new but are flowing much more
thickly now, to the approach of elections in Turkey and the politicians' need to
appear tough in the eyes of an increasingly nationalistic and anti-US
electorate.
But there is a risk the politicians may get swept along by their rhetoric into
rash decisions. Air raids on mountain hideouts of Kurdish Labour Party (PKK)
rebels or small-scale commando raids over the border are possible, some analysts
say.
"There is a Turkish proverb that says, 'the dog that barks does not bite'... The
politicians are just making lots of noise, provoking each other in the search
for votes," said Dogu Ergil of Ankara University, author of books on the Kurdish
issue.
"But exaggerated rhetoric that ends with no action could undermine their
credibility in the public's eyes," he said.
Turkey's parliament chooses a new president in May — many think Erdogan will go
for the top job, despite worries over his Islamist past — and voters elect a new
parliament in November.
"I would say half the noise we are hearing now on Iraq and the Kurds is about
the presidential elections, the other half is about
the general election. Iraq is an easy issue to exploit," said Semih Idiz,
diplomatic correspondent of CNN Turk TV.
"It is posture politics, but there is a danger of it all getting out of hand,"
he said..
Erdogan this week repeated claims that 600,000 Kurds have moved into Kirkuk in
the past few years in a deliberate attempt to crowd out the Arabs and
Turkish-speaking Turkmens while the United States — "our supposed strategic
ally" — looked on.
Most analysts dismiss the idea of deploying Turkish troops to Kirkuk, which is
deep inside Iraq, not on the border. This would turn Turks back into occupiers
in a region they dominated for centuries within the Ottoman Empire.
Major military action by Turkey would wreck relations with both the United
States and the European Union, which Ankara aspires to join. And why would
Turkey, despite having the second largest military in NATO, have any more
success in Iraq than the US superpower, even if its aims were only local, they
say.
Turkey has other levers, commercial and diplomatic, with which it can try to
shape events in Kirkuk and northern Iraq.
Iraqi Kurds' trade routes and energy pipelines cross Turkish territory. Turkish
firms are also big investors in Kurdistan region.
