A SPATE of attack has raised fears that Turkey’s long war with separatist Kurds in the country’s south-east may heat up again. Since the capture of a Kurdish leader, Abdullah Ocalan, who has been locked up in a Turkish jail since 1999, trouble has abated. But on Monday June 4th eight Turkish troops were killed in Tunceli province, in Turkey. And not long before that, 12 people were killed, including some soldiers, by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) it is thought. The organisation is also blamed for a suicide bombing shortly before in Ankara. The Turkish army has shelled Kurdish areas in response.
Those targets were not in Turkey but across the border in Iraq. The conflict is now taking on a menacing regional dimension. Turkey claims that the PKK is operating from bases in Iraqi Kurdistan. Of late, Turkish generals have speculated openly about striking the PKK’s there. Abdullah Gul, the usually mild-mannered foreign minister, claimed on Monday that Turkey had “every right” to respond by attacking Kurds in Iraq. A foreign-ministry official has said that Turkey may deliver a dossier on PKK terrorism to the UN—bolstering a legal case for an attack into Iraq in self-defence. The sabre-rattling has drawn a worried rebuke from Robert Gates, America’s defence secretary.
The number of awkward questions raised is as great as the number of overlapping alliances and rivalries in the region. The Kurds are America’s best friends in Iraq and a decent advertisement that at least something has gone right in that bloodied country. Many plans for an American exit from Iraq involve leaving some forces in the relatively peaceful region. So a Turkish invasion would be a disaster, inserting NATO’s second-largest army in the middle of a territory America is desperately hoping to keep calm.
The plot is even thicker, however. According to many reports America is stirring Kurdish ambitions in Iran, where the world’s biggest bunch stateless people also have a significant presence. American assistance to Iranian Kurds may involve military assistance, and those Kurds may also operate from bases in Iraq. In other words, the Turks could find themselves shooting at Kurds who are firing back with American-supplied weapons.
But at least this is one issue uniting a deeply divided country. Turkey is going through its worst political crisis in a decade. Tensions are high between the secular establishment (including the army, which regards itself as the guardian of Kemal Ataturk’s legacy) and the mildly Islamist government. Now, the two have found something on which they both agree. Both Mr Gul and the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, have sounded the same belligerent notes as the military top brass.
But the costs of confrontation with the Kurds could be high. Invading Iraq would not only damage Turkey’s traditional friendship with America. It would further worsen Turkey’s chances for membership of the European Union. Those prospects have already dimmed after the election in France of Nicolas Sarkozy; the new president does not want Turkey in Europe. A country fighting a war in Northern Iraq, perhaps in tacit alliance with Iran, would reinforce the arguments of Mr Sarkozy and others who say Turkey is simply not European. At present, Turkey is acting like it does not care—perhaps because Turks feel that their chances of join the EU have receded so far anyway that they have little to lose.
These worries may be overdone. Turkey holds an election in July and an invasion is probably unlikely before then. The tough talk about the Kurds may be mainly posturing for a domestic audience at the moment. But perhaps after the election, if tensions remain high, it may not take much to ignite yet another of the region’s potential conflicts.
Jun 5th 2007From Economist.com
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