When U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Turkey last week, her mission was to drum up international support for new, hard-line measures against Iran. For their part, the Turks were more concerned with the America’s continued failure to stabilize the situation in Iraq. Particularly problematic is the fact that Turkey’s shared border with northern Iraq remains unsecured and has become an entry point for Kurdish terrorists. Operating from bases inside Iraq, the organization known as the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) has stepped up their incursions into eastern Turkey with the hopes of re-igniting a Kurdish separatist movement.
In 1984 the PKK first entered into open revolt against Turkish authorities, resulting in nearly a decade of bloodshed. It is estimated that some 37,000 were killed before PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan was arrested in 1999 and the remaining Kurdish fighters withdrew from eastern Turkey into northern Iraq.
A combination of security measures applied in conjunction with social reforms has kept the lid on the Kurdish separatists since that juncture. However, following the U.S.-led intervention into Iraq in 2003, the Kurdish warlords in the autonomous northern Iraqi provinces have steadily entrenched their political power, defiantly kept their private peshmerga militias and systematically moved towards declaring an independent Kurdistan.
The Iraqi Kurdish warlords have also unrepentantly protected the presence of the PKK camps within their provinces. For the United States, this situation has proven particularly embarrassing. The initial justification for toppling Saddam was ostensibly to secure weapons of mass destruction (that never existed), but the war is still being sold by the Bush administration as an “ongoing military campaign in the war against terror.”
The PKK is recognized as a terrorist organization by the United States — responsible for numerous bomb attacks against civilian targets — yet after three years of military occupation, U.S. forces have not taken action against the PKK camps in northern Iraq. This is despite the fact that Turkey is a key NATO ally and — as a secular Muslim democracy — a key cornerstone to the State Department’s Middle East policy.
In fact, last year, when an emboldened PKK first stepped up their cross-border terrorist attacks, the United States officially warned Turkey to refrain from any retaliatory attacks inside Iraqi territory. Reluctantly complying with the American restrictions, Turkish security forces beefed up their presence along the Iraq border.
Last month the Turks successfully engaged a PKK force attempting to infiltrate Turkish territory, and 14 Kurdish terrorists were killed following a vicious gun battle. When local residents conducted a funeral procession for four of the slain Kurds in the city of Diyarbakir, things turned ugly. Young demonstrators engaged riot police in a series of violent clashes that left 15 dead and hundreds injured. The youthful Kurds were calling for independence and invoking the name of imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan.
Just prior to Condoleezza Rice’s visit this tense situation was further fueled by yet another gun battle between Turkish police and PKK terrorists. This latest skirmish left seven more Kurds dead near the border town of Silopi.
In response to the escalation of violence, the Turks mobilized their 7th Army Corps and moved additional troops into eastern Turkey. In total, an estimated 250,000 Turkish military, police and gendarmerie are presently operational in the border region.
In anticipation of Rice’s visit, many Turks expected their military would be given the green light to enter Iraq to destroy the PKK camps. Instead, the secretary of state offered “increased cooperation” with Turkish intelligence and vowed that the United States would set up a “trilateral mechanism” between the United States, Turkey and Iraq to help contain the PKK.
The rationale used by State Department officials to deny Turkey the option of military action is that it would further destabilize Iraq. The Americans presently have just a handful of troops in the northern Iraq provinces and this region, as a result of being under the control of Kurdish warlords, is considered the most secure area in the entire country.
The Pentagon knows that if they attempt to clamp down on the PKK terrorist camps, they will run afoul of the Iraqi Kurdish warlords. To even attempt to disarm the peshmerga militias and replace them with U.S. troops would require the deployment of another 30-40,000 soldiers. With an already overstretched U.S. military barely able to maintain the current manning levels, taking on the PKK is not an option.
So to recap quickly for those of you who lost track of the bouncing ball, the United States invades Iraq in self-defense but forbids Turkey from making a military incursion against known terrorists because “it might destabilize the region.”
Whatever happened to George Bush’s simple axiom, “You’re either with us or you’re against us”?