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ANKARA: Turkey is bargaining hard with the United States for broad freedom of action in northern Iraq in the event of war, haunted by historic suspicions of the West and fears a hostile Kurdish state will emerge from chaos.
Turkey’s ambivalence towards the West — aspiring to be a part of it but harbouring a dark wariness of it — might only be deepened by Nato’s failure this week to meet a Turkish request on defence preparations ahead of any war.
Turkey recalls somewhat poignantly how it guarded Nato’s frontline through the Cold War.
Turkish leader Tayyip Erdogan minces no words about his vision of Turkey’s role in keeping order in northern Iraq. US notions of a united coalition command that would control Turkish troops amount — he says — to insult, a national humiliation.
“I can say very openly and clearly...the Turkish army is capable of carrying this out under its own command.”
Washington hopes Turkey’s parliament will vote on February 18 to allow a US force — many expect some 30,000 — to deploy here for any attack on Iraq. But the next week will see tough trading on related issues, including the status of Turkish forces in a northern zone beyond Baghdad’s control since 1991.
“I think Turkey will say yes to the US requests, because by opposing they would lose too much,” said one Western diplomat. “But there are prickly issues that have to be sorted out. Otherwise, US troops pressing a northern front could find feuding between Turkish troops and Kurds at their rear.”
Turkey’s ultimate historical nightmare is a force of Iraqi Kurds seizing arms in the turmoil of war, sweeping south from their heartland and taking oilfields in Mosul and Kirkuk that could provide the financial lifeblood of a Kurdish state.
Such a state, runs the argument, would reignite Kurdish armed rebellion here and threaten Turkish unity. It is a pervasive fear, rooted in a tentative plan by Britain and its allies some 80 years ago to partition Turkey’s present-day Anatolian heartland, opening the door to a Kurdish state.
PANDORA’S BOX: Two Kurdish groups controlling much of northern Iraq deny such aspirations but this cuts no ice with Ankara. A US special envoy also failed to allay Turkish fears during a visit. With time running out to February 18, he may try again.
“A unilateral move by Turkey could open a Pandora’s box,” one Iraqi opposition official said. “Any Turkish steps should be well worked out and agreed in advance. Turkey has kept up to a few thousand troops in northern Iraq since the first Gulf War, when Baghdad lost control of the area. Diplomats say it plans to bolster that number greatly.
Turkish troops’ declared aim would be to protect a Turkmen minority and oversee a complex of refugee camps readied in a border buffer zone inside Iraq. They could, as in past years, pursue Turkish Kurdish rebels in the mountains.
Undoubtedly their primary task would be to forestall any uncontrolled “slide” towards declaration of a Kurdish state. Whether or to what extent Turkey would use arms to stop such a move has been left an open question by political leaders.
Turkish troops have fought Kurdish rebels in Turkey’s southeast since 1984 in a conflict that has cost over 30,000 lives. Ankara’s relations with the two Iraqi Kurdish groups, although both denounce the PKK, are marked by mutual suspicion.
Turkish ambassador to Washington Faruk Logoglu highlighted Ankara’s ambiguous attitude to northern Iraq. It is not Turkey’s ‘backyard’. “But it has life-and-death importance for Turkey.”
Many Iraqi Kurds, declaring the aim of a united federal Iraq with Kurdish autonomy, suspect Turks of territorial ambitions.
“We will defend the unity and territorial integrity of Iraq, we will defend it by any means that we deem appropriate at that moment,” Iraqi National Congress Leader Ahmad Chalabi said in an interview conducted in northern Iraq.—Reuters
