SPEAKING FREELY
Historic fault lines and modern opportunism
By Jonathan Feiser

Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have their say. Please click here if you are interested in contributing.

On July 24, 1923 the Treaty of Lausanne trumped the audacious and punitive demands of Sevres. Decades later - and once again - foreign interventions pose another visit to the cyclic continuum between foreign policies and the frictions with nationalism. The modern chessboard may refract a different game, but as US policy once again faces a dilemma of post war policy in the Middle East, choices yet cemented in stone may require reevaluations of the present based on the movements and momentums of the past.

One peripheral, but critical test, of future US policy exists between Turkish geopolitical concerns in northern Iraq and Kurdish intentions that have long been relevant in a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq.

Turkey possesses a mix of conductivity and potential threats within the region. The present issue exists within historical claims buttressed by a growing urgency that remains interlinked between both domestic and national security realities alike. One example is Mosul, although historically apart of the Ottoman Empire, it was coincidentally never returned under the near complete recuperates of the Treaty of Lausanne. Such deeply rooted issues as these inhabit a simultaneous role of historic euphoria and current events. This coexistence of perceptions, moreover, shares a conflicting trajectory with the geopolitical intentions of the presently united Kurdish populations of northern Iraq. The challenge from afar, however, is to separate the ambition and opportunism from actual threat assessment.

The dilemma for the United States in this glossy pre-invasion purgatory remains yet just one more complex decision of whom to support and when such support would deem most equitable to a stabilized post Saddam Iraq. Both sides of this dilemma must be examined.

The value of this complexity within the current sedimentary of various - and impending - factors that concern Turkey exists within the three-way role conflict between the past and present: the role as a US ally, NATO, and desired role with the European Union. First, the efforts - both past and present - of Turkish leadership to introduce and proliferate the "Turkish model" eastward remains a process continually blighted with diminishing returns. Thus, with little predictability in measuring the just noticeable differences between Ankara's economic affluence at home and cultural influence eastward domestic realities remain intriguingly linked as the core of foreign decision making.

A second concern for Ankara was recently manifested at the Copenhagen summit this previous December when - once again - the EU rejected Turkish entrance into the union. Historical whispers are evident here. The decline of the Ottoman Empire in the late 18th century lost both social and diplomatic esteem as the military balance of power shifted and fear diminished. In the present tense, history is not repeating itself, it is merely continuing to maintain the demarcation symbolized by the Carpathians, imposed long ago by an overreaching and exhausted Roman Empire. Thus, history remains enforced by perceptions of need and fear. In the present concerns of Ankara, the prolonged process of attempting entrance into the EU has not only eroded morale among the Turkish populations, but also frustrated the military and political leadership.

Naturally, the questionability of identity within the far from nominative "Christian family of nations" exists that jells powerful notions of territorial extension and an Eastern variant of manifest destiny. Thus, for Turkey, a vanquished Saddam is an opportune vacuum embellishing both this historical reunion from time immemorial, an economic godsend in the trying times of the 21st century, and a chance to "preemptively" halt a potential base for would-be revivals of Kurdish terrorist attacks.

The dilemma, however, returns to one source of Turkey's discontent and suppressing estrangement from the European family: the military commitment of NATO. In shorthand, this predicament is diagnosed as a role-conflict of the supranational nature. But the complexities of the globalized present tense, to include the pressures from the WTO and unpredictable relations with Greece that have traditionally complicated both the US and Turkish role - and will unquestionably continue after next Gulf war is said and done.

The post-war US policy remains imperative and should not be glossed over in the present questions of war. The latter is inevitable by human nature alone; the former meanwhile desperately requires stability often unperceived at the beginning of conflict. The post-war solution - where volatility is often underestimated compared to the immediate concerns of incoming war - requires cooperation in the short run, but trust is precondition for long-term regional stability and growth. United States support from the Kurds - and their protracted acceptance of this support - with either option putting them at risk for retaliation from Baghdad before the core opposition begins. This remains a reality because, as time as shown, it has occurred before and in the present - it remains an effective deterrent to exposed Kurdish, and Turkmen, populations.

On the other hand, support for the Turkish opportunism in the case of war could result in a humanitarian disaster in an era where genocide is approached as a 20th century innovation. In either case, with limitless variables, it will take a cohesive effort. In either case, opposition with such a move - in spite of Turkey's NATO member status - remains a certain reality in oppositional entity both within and outside of NATO and the EU.

If war does come to the region, it is clear that the hardest - and no doubt that longest phase - will be the post conflict scenario. Additionally, the resulting scenario holds promise of potential proliferation of interregional conflict. The nature of such conflict would be multi-dimensional, especially in a region where capricious fault lines remain a very real attribute of the 21st century landscape. Thus, beyond vengeance, more intimately suppressed veins such as ethnic lines of culture, class, and historical identification are sure to reflect an opportunism that comes in cycles.

Historically and continually, dictatorships harbor power. However, removing Saddam from the current Ba'athist mechanism reveals the shell of a state that is faceless without its core. In the Western approach to nationalism, Iraq is deeply divided along cultural and religious lines in which class and intervention from stronger foreign powers has certainly played a strong part. Thus, the state remains as a cardboard regime layered with differing designs of successive coupes since the fall of Faisal II in 1958.

In the meantime, the future of the region, in some cases, provides reliable linkage to the structural sensitivities of the globalism trend - and that is all of us. There is no doubt that regime change here, even on Wilsonian morality alone, is a must. The test for the Untied States remains a balance of a complete cycle of intervention (ie regime change and regime rebuild) or limiting the locus of intervention merely on military grounds (ie weapons of mass destruction, terrorism grounds) while balancing the potentialities in gardening approaches toward regional parties, permanent and situational allies alike. The recent lessons of Afghanistan echo themes laced with patience and collation when implementing democracy - but also warn of long entrenched struggles that take generations to mend.

Thus, while Afghanistan remains on the precipice of relapsing to trends reflective under the "Soviet model", the post war portrait may be similar in Iraq. Without local and regional cohesion from within, ideas of modern day Marshall Plans remain inspirational yet useless theory.

In sum, Turkey and the Kurdish coalition of the PUK and the KDP need to maintain a sense of understanding in terms of geopolitical security and resource-driven ambition. Furthermore, US policy must reflect this balance juxtaposed to its own regional interests. Survival in any hypothetical case depends on coming to terms. The Turkish balance accepts the fact that the age of empires and frontiers is gone. Quite possibly, moreover, the future recognition - in any form - of Kurdistan could utterly negate the ethnically rooted frictions both within and across issues of Turkish national security.

A second reality in such establishment could even further the recent memory of Kurdish-Turkish friction. In either case, the new theme for economic stability resides within the concept and concert of enforced regional security; this calculus remains a central issue in pivotal regions where intrastate economy and terrorism remain routine characteristics of the evolutionary global system.

Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have their say. Please click here if you are interested in contributing.