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Turkey’s Kurdish problem: lessons for India

When Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan left Ankara and headed for London on October 22, he carried a folder of Turkish intelligence reports. It was a meticulous chronicle of hard information on Israeli “experts” providing training to Kurdish military forces in the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq. Mr. Erdogan intended to plead with his Israeli counterpart, Ehud Olmert, whom he would meet in London, that Israel, being a good friend of Turkey, refrain from such activities.

The Ottoman Empire had a unique record of providing asylum to wandering Jews. Sadly, the situation drips with irony of near-Shakespearean proportions – “Et tu, Brute? Then, fall Caesar!” It was Turkey which invited Israel in the innocent days of the post-Cold War era in the mid-1990s to its hearths in the eastern Kurdish regions for cooperation in security. Turkey needed Israel’s expertise.

Turkey’s Kurdish dilemma, painfully unfolding in front of the international community, offers salutary lessons for strategic thinkers. It enables them to take a rare peep into the actual world of politics and the pitiless ravines of international diplomacy.

Israel has taken firm habitation on the Kurdish landscape in northern Iraq. It incrementally began realising in the past four years of American occupation of Iraq that Kurds are no less valuable as friends than Turks. Israeli businessmen flocked to northern Iraq, eyeing its economic boom underwritten by the fabulous oilfields of Kirkuk. Israeli intelligence inevitably came in as northern Iraq provides a perfect setting for mounting covert operations inside Iran.

The Kurdish region constitutes a rare piece of real estate in geopolitics — like, for instance, Kashmir or Afghanistan, Georgia or Lebanon. If you hold it in your palm, you can play a lot of games in the surrounding regions and countries. You can even devise incredibly intricate games. Israelis know they are in complete harmony with the American regional policy in northern Iraq.

In the entire bloody tragedy of Iraq, the only shining part for the United States at the moment is the northern region of Kurds. The U.S. has a long history of association with the Kurds. More recently, through the 1990s, when the U.S. imposed a “no-fly zone” over the region (sadly, from the Turkish airbase of Incirlik), it assumed an unparalleled verve. Washington succeeded incrementally in defining a Kurdish political entity in northern Iraq. This success was directly in proportion to the degradation of the Saddam Hussein regime. By the time of the invasion of Iraq in 2003, northern Iraq had already become a lawless land — like, say, Waziristan in Pakistan today — where the central authority lost control.

Of course, there were elements aplenty in northern Iraq, especially Islamist groups, who were inimical to the U.S. regional policy. But over a length of time, they were overcome or co-opted. Israeli expertise came in handy for the U.S. Turkey unwittingly lent a helping hand in bringing the Kurds into close touch with the U.S. and Israel. Turkey became the transit point for American envoys and Israeli operatives to interact with them. Turkey was helping its allies. It miscalculated. It assumed that in any case, it controlled the economic life of northern Iraq and, therefore, would remain the predominant power in the region, no matter the dabbling by outside powers. But as time passed, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) of northern Iraq made itself indispensable as the U.S.’ staunchest ally in Iraq and, equally, by providing a solid foothold for Israel along Iran’s soft underbelly. American and Israeli priorities changed. Iraq’s disintegration throws into relief the KRG’s value as an oasis of stability for the U.S. strategy. The imperative of “regime change” in Tehran became the core objective of the U.S. and Israeli policy.

The KRG today prides itself on having influential friends in American politics and strategic community. It has built international airports in Irbil and Al-Sulaymaniyah, which provide a window to the outside world. Western oil majors are flocking to the region. The KRG reckons its day has come, after ageless waiting of a century, to insist on an independent Kurdistan embedded among Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey.

But the KRG must get Turkey to deal with it, which Ankara stubbornly refuses to do. Turkey does not recognise the KRG’s claim over Kirkuk, homeland to a large Turkmen population. Besides, Turkey visualises that an independent Kurdistan emerging out of the debris of Iraq is a sure recipe for an explosive, seamless mix of Kurdish nationalism that will uncontrollably spill over its eastern Kurdish provinces. (Turkey shares this apprehension with Iran and Syria.) Indeed, its fears are legitimate. Imagine, for argument’s sake, Pakistan becoming a failed state and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and Northern Areas emerging as independent entities in the region and becoming a playpen for outside powers.

Of course, this is all an unfinished business of Partition, when imperial Britain unilaterally carved up Mesopotamia and then went on to dictate modern Turkey’s state boundaries under the infamous 1922 settlement, leaving the strategically important northern Iraq as its own sphere of influence.

Like any militant group, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which spreads horrendous violence inside Turkey, has over time become a plaything for many outside powers. It is at once obvious that the terrorist organisation is not acting on its own. The PKK cadres are well equipped and far better trained today than anytime in their 25-year violent campaign (which has already taken 40,000 Turkish lives). KRG president Massoud Barzani publicly dissociates himself from the PKK. He pleads inability to curb its activities from bases in the territory under his control but warns that he will resist any Turkish cross-border operation in pursuit of the PKK.

Meanwhile, the PKK cadres freely roam around in northern Iraq. Its leaders openly give interviews to the Western media. It indulges in fund-raising. It maintains training camps. Weapons given by the U.S. to Mr. Barzani are finding their way into the PKK’s hands. The U.S. pleads its forces are busy fighting al-Qaeda in Iraq and cannot do much by way of curbing PKK activities.

No wonder, Mr. Erdogan hit out at Washington’s sophistry in his recent interview with Sunday Times: “We have told President Bush numerous times how sensitive we are about this issue [PKK] but up till now we have not had a single positive result. America is our strategic partner. But in northern Iraq, we feel that both the terrorist organisation and the administration there are sheltering behind America… It makes us sad to see American weapons being found in the possession of the terrorist organisation acting against Turkey.”

In principle, Washington counsels a “political solution” to Turkey’s Kurdish problem. In essence, it is nudging Turkey to negotiate directly with the KRG. Meanwhile, Turkey feels the pain of PKK terrorism. As Opposition leader Deniz Baykal put it, “The knife has reached the bone.”

Ankara is on a painful learning curve. It has no choice but to knock on Washington’s door. The alternative is to invade Iraq, which could get it into a quagmire with frightful consequences. Yet, Turkey is one of America’s oldest transatlantic partners — a founder of the NATO, in fact. It remains crucial for the U.S. strategic interests in the Middle East and the Black Sea regions.

Washington is bargaining with Turkey. Why so? The fact remains that Turkey’s regional policies have changed course under the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government. Ankara has become noticeably circumspect in the recent years toward the U.S. regional policies. Apart from the Islamist roots of the AKP government, other factors have come into play. Turkey’s refusal to join the invasion of Iraq in 2003; the AKP government’s dealings with the Hamas leadership in Palestine; independent stance on Lebanon; warming of ties between Turkey and Iran and Syria; Ankara’s calibrated distancing from the U.S. strategy in Iraq; strengthening of Russia-Iran cooperation; growing flexibility in Turkey’s relations with the West; and a newfound proximity between Turkey and the East — all these have added up as complicating factors in the U.S-Turkey relations in the past four years.

In sum, Ankara is being made to realise that it simply cannot afford to have an independent foreign policy in its surrounding regions. The bottom line, as far as Washington is concerned, is Turkey forms part of the Western security system and the bondage is like a Catholic marriage — in perpetuity. As the new cold war gathers momentum, there is added urgency for Washington that Turkey should not remain a bystander, as in the Iraq invasion of 2003, if a U.S. military strike against Iran ensues.

The standoff in the inhospitable mountains of the Turkish-Iraqi border region becomes a morality play, a spectacle of the quintessence of “strategic partnerships” in contemporary world. Not too long ago, strategic thinkers in their ivory towers would have thought that the U.S. regional policy provided for Turkey a special status as a “balancer” in the Middle East.

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