Bush teeters on Turkish-Kurd
tightrope By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - Spurred by the deployment of
at least 100,000 troops along Turkey's border with
Iraq, the administration of US President George W
Bush is pressing its closest clients in Iraqi
Kurdistan to crack down hard against the Kurdistan
Workers' Party (PKK), which Washington considers a
terrorist organization.
Given the
administration's refusal so far to back up that
pressure with military muscle, however, it remains
unclear whether its efforts will translate into
action by local Kurdish authorities, or
prevent a cross-border
offensive that could throw into chaos the one
Iraqi region that has enjoyed stability since the
2003 US invasion.
The indications are that
US pressure is having only a limited impact. The
PKK's offer to observe a conditional ceasefire was
dismissed both by Ankara and officials in
Washington, who noted that such declarations had
proved meaningless in the past.
And a
declaration by the government of Iraqi Prime
Minister Nuri al-Maliki that it will close down
all PKK offices throughout Iraq was also
considered toothless, since Iraqi troops at least
nominally under Maliki's control are not permitted
to operate in Kurdistan where the Peshmerga, the
Kurdish militia forces, are charged with
maintaining security.
"I understand
there's this commitment to shut down offices,"
said US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.
"Okay, but what you need to see are actual outputs
from inputs that the Iraqi government might make.
The outputs are that you need to stop terrorist
attacks; there needs to be prevention of terrorist
attacks, and you need to get to the root cause
here, and that is to stop this terrorist
organization from operating on Iraqi soil," he
added.
Most analysts in Washington believe
that neither Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan nor his military commanders are eager to
send their forces into Iraq to deal with the
estimated 3,000 PKK guerrillas who are thought to
be based there and that diplomacy, which has
intensified dramatically over the past several
days, has at least several more days to play
itself out.
Indeed, senior Turkish
officials themselves have stressed they prefer
diplomatic, and, if that doesn't work, economic
pressure to persuade Iraqi and regional
authorities to move against the PKK. Kurdistan is
landlocked and its economy is heavily dependent on
open borders with Turkey, as well as Iran and
Syria, both of which, with large and restive
Kurdish populations of their own, have expressed
solidarity with Ankara in recent days.
But
any major new attack by Iraq-based PKK guerrillas,
who killed 12 Turkish soldiers and claimed to have
taken prisoner eight more over the weekend, will
likely force Erdogan to order his military to
cross the border - initially with air strikes and
commandos, according to analysts - as authorized
by the Turkish Parliament last week.
"If
there is another event, Erdogan and the military,
despite their reluctance to be drawn reflexively
across that border, will probably have to do
something, and the options aren't particularly
good," according to a former US ambassador to
Ankara, Mark Parris.
"I have no doubt that
[US ambassador to Iraq] Ryan Crocker, [US Iraq
commander General David] Petraeus and people here
are pounding on the Iraqi leadership to get this
under control," Parris added in a teleconference
on the crisis sponsored by the New York-based
Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
At the
same time, however, the administration finds its
influence over the key parties at a particularly
low ebb. Anti-US sentiment in an increasingly
democratic Turkey is at an all-time high, not
least because of Washington's refusal to date to
seriously address Ankara's concerns about the PKK,
a refusal that has fed the perception that the US
has a secret agenda to break up Iraq and create an
independent Kurdistan that will naturally act as
an inspiration for Kurds in Turkey to seek
independence.
"We have just not answered
the mail on this," according to Ian Lesser, an
expert at the German Marshall Fund and author of a
new book on US-Turkey relations, significantly
entitled Beyond Suspicion.
"We're
seeing the result of letting this issue lie for so
long," according to Stephen Cook, a Turkey expert
at CFR, who noted that Joseph Ralston, the special
US envoy appointed by Bush last year to deal with
Turkey's concerns, resigned recently, reportedly
out of frustration at the administration's
neglect. "The Turks have very little trust in our
ability to do anything on this issue."
At
the same time, Ankara enjoys considerable leverage
over the US both as a key North Atlantic Treaty
Organization partner that contributes 1,000 troops
to the alliance's forces in Afghanistan and as the
host of Incirlik air base, a major logistical hub
for US forces in Iraq.
Hints by Turkish
officials that Ankara would restrict access to the
base after a key Congressional committee approved
a non-binding resolution on the "genocide" of up
to 1.5 million Armenians in the last days of the
Ottoman Empire spurred an all-out lobbying effort
by the administration and the Pentagon, in
particular, to persuade lawmakers to drop the
matter.
Washington similarly finds its
leverage over Iraqi Kurds limited, not least
because it has all but ruled out deploying
already-stretched US troops from central and
southern Iraq to the north's mountain redoubts
where the PKK guerrillas are based, and because
the PKK is believed to have strong popular support
in Kurdistan.
"US action against the PKK
could be as destabilizing as a Turkish incursion,"
according to Parris, who also noted that US
strategy for building an Iraqi army capable of
assuming much of the security burden that has been
shouldered by US troops has come to depend mainly
on the supply of Peshmerga recruits by the
Kurdistan authorities.
The authorities may
be seeking to exact a high price for cracking down
on the PKK; namely, the holding of a referendum in
oil-rich Kirkuk on its absorption by Kurdistan, a
step that the Turks have long warned against and
one that could provoke a broader military
intervention.
On this issue, US diplomacy
until now has been more activist than on the PKK.
It has successfully delayed the holding of such a
referendum, which was mandated to take place this
year by the 2005 constitution, until at least next
year. Washington is concerned that the referendum
could spark major ethnic violence in the region,
as well as intervention by Turkey.
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
