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Turks going into Iraq after all?
by Jim Geraghty, National Review's man in TurkeyAfter feeling fairly confident that Turkish rhetoric about sending its military into Iraq to deal with PKK terrorists was just that rhetoric I've been hearing a different tune in the last 48 hours. Turkey might just do it. I suspect the Turkish government is starting to paint itself into a corner. Since the deaths of several Turkish soldiers in PKK attacks last weekend, the debate has gone something like this: Turkish Political Leaders: If Iraq's Kurds won't deal with the PKK terrorists in their midst, we may go over there and do it for them! So now the Turkish government is reaching a point where they have two bad options: 1) Send troops into Iraq to hunt down the PKK, and accept the military and diplomatic consequences; hope that the fog of war doesn't cause some sort of incident between Turkish forces and coalition troops, and hope that the Kurds/Iraqis don't see the incident as an invasion of their country; or, 2) don't send troops over the border after talking about it for a week, and risk getting ripped in their own press for backing down and looking like they took orders from the Americans. The situation in Israel appears to be a convenient comparison for the Turks. If Israel can cross a national border to deal with terrorists, why can't Turkey? (Well, there aren't a bunch of coalition troops over the border in Lebanon, for starters...) If nothing else, Turkish forces entering Northern Iraq would provide us with some bitter humor. "Oh, sure, NOW you guys want to invade. Where was this "can-do" spirit back in 2003?" By the way, if you want a really bad scenario, imagine if the Turkish forces cross over; the Iraqi Kurds see this as an invasion and call on Iraq's military/militias/Shia and Sunni to help them defend their territory; the answer from non-Kurdish Iraqis is "no, this is your problem;" and then the Kurds respond by saying, "To hell with this, we're declaring independence." Kurdish independence is the Turkish nightmare scenario; they see it as their Fort Sumter, as they fear an independent Kurdish nation on their border would inspire their own Kurdish populations to aim for independence. So - maybe all of this is still rhetoric. But maybe I'm mistaking what I hope happens with what is likely to happen... Posted by: Mike 2006-07-21 |
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