Tinderbox: Turkey and the Iraqi Kurds

Posted by Philip Barron at 9:20 AM on April 13, 2007.

Each time we come back to the slow-boil disaster that is Turkey and the Kurds of northern Iraq, the situation is closer to a spillover. Last May, we saw that George Bush's laissez-faire approach to that region had resulted in a dangerous absence of dialogue between the parties. Back in August, we witnessed the literally explosive development of Turkey and Iran massing troops on the border and lobbing shells into Iraqi territory. As I remarked at the time:

Turkey - an American ally, a member of NATO, and wannabe European Union member - has long awaited the help of the United States on the matter of the PPK hiding out in Iraq, but to no avail. Now Iran - which cares little for the US or its concerns - is demonstrating to Turkey that waiting on America is a fool's game.

Turkey seems to have decided that it's tired of playing that game. This from Juan Cole:

The powerful Turkish General Yasar Buyukanit said Thursday that Turkish forces needed to go into northern Iraq after Kurdish PKK guerrillas he believes are being given safe haven there. He said he had not yet submitted a request to parliament for authorization. The Turkish-Iraqi border is now a tinderbox. This is the other shoe in the Iraq conflict.

And it's dropping, thanks to provocative rhetoric from Iraqi Kurd leaders.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan attacked the president of the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government (IKRG), Massoud Barzani, for Barzani's comments on April 6 in an interview with the al-Arabiya satellite television station. Barzani rejected Turkish concerns over the attempts by the IKRG to incorporate the oil city of Kirkuk into its territory, saying that if Ankara interfered, that he would interfere in Turkish cities. The Turks are anyway raw about Kurdish political violence in eastern Anatolia near Iraq, since 37,000 were killed in a low-intensity guerrilla struggle of radical Kurds against the Turkish state. Erdogan accused Barzani of getting above himself and said that the Iraqi Kurds would pay a "high price" for Barzani's threats.

The US State Department protested to Barzani over the vehemence of his statements.

This conflict could blow up the whole world.

Or a significant portion of it, at least, one that's already aflame.

Oh, the official American rebuke to Barzani?

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said, "We think that those kinds of statements are really unhelpful, and they certainly do not further the goal of greater Turkish-Iraqi cooperation on issues of common concern, including fighting the PKK."

Tough stuff. That'll show the Kurds.

This latest ineptitude on the part of the White House - the lack of serious engagement of both parties - has contributed to a boilover that will make the recent extension of troop deployment in Iraq look like stateside R&R.

If anyone in the mainstream press here in the States is paying much heed to the war around the bend, I haven't heard about it.

Tagged as: iraq, kurdistan, kurds, turkey

Philip Barron is a St. Louis writer and author of the blog Waveflux.