Turkey Authorizes Incursions into Northern Iraq

Since late September, PKK-led bombings have been responsible for the deaths of over two dozen civilians and soldiers. In response, the Turkish parliament has authorized military action in Iraq, and on Oct. 9, the country’s Supreme Anti-Terror Board and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan issued orders to attack. The Turkish government’s decision has strained the country’s relations with the U.S., who feels that an incursion into northern Iraq would upset that region’s relative stability.

On Oct. 17, the Turkish parliament passed a resolution permitting the military to go into Iraq anytime up to one year from its ratification. Gen. Ergin Saygun, deputy chief of the Turkish Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that the military had no firm position on whether it would launch an offensive in the next few months. Duran Kalkan, a senior commander in the PKK, said that the Turkish military would suffer a serious blow if it launched a wintertime offensive.

Turkey’s state news service, the Anatolia News Agency, reported that Turkish soldiers had trapped some 100 PKK fighters in a region with many caves near the Turkish-Iraqi border. In a national address as part of Turkey’s festivities for Oct. 29, the country’s national day, President Abdullah Gul said, “The struggle that we have been leading for a long time, as a nation, against this terrorism curse is now being led with more determination.” Abdul-Rahman al-Chaderchi, a spokesperson for the PKK, denied the report, saying, “Allegations [of fighting] are part of the Turkish propaganda against the PKK.” In nearby Tunceli province in Turkey, 15 PKK fighters were killed in a Turkish-led operation on Oct. 29. Turkish nationalists have attacked businesses run by ethnic Kurds, including a shop in Turkey’s fourth-largest city, Bursa, some 90 miles from Istanbul, as well as a café in Mugla province, which is home to many of the country’s summer resort towns.

The Council on Foreign Relations describes the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, known as PKK because of its initials in Kurdish, as a far-leftist group seeking to create an independent Kurdish state in southeastern Turkey and parts of neighboring countries. As part of its struggle, the group has resorted to terrorist tactics aimed at civilians. These tactics include targeting Kurdish peasants and Turkish diplomatic installations. Since the mid-1980s, the conflict has claimed some 35,000 lives.

Vincent Boland, Turkey correspondent for the Financial Times, writes about the possible incursion: “The prospect of a Turkish incursion into northern Iraq moved a step closer on Monday after Turkey’s cabinet agreed to seek parliamentary approval for a military response to a resurgence in attacks by PKK separatists operating from mountain hideaways in Iraq. The move leaves Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s prime minister, facing the most difficult foreign policy test of his career as he juggles a possible military response to recent terrorist attacks with the need to avoid a complete breakdown in the country’s relations with the U.S.”

1920, amidst the aftermath of World War I, the Allies and the soon-to-be defunct Ottoman government signed the Treaty of Sevres. Under this treaty, three Arab states were created, as well as independent Armenian and Kurdish states. Yet the treaty greatly restricted the amount of land allotted to ethnic Turks. During the Turkish War of Independence in the early 1920s, Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, led the military in a quest to reclaim territory. The result was the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne and the abandonment of plans for separate Armenian and Kurdish states.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan rose to power through populist politics. In 1994 Erdogan was elected as the mayor of the Greater Istanbul Municipality. In 1998 he was convicted of “inciting religious hatred” due to his recitation of an Islamist poem. He was then jailed for a brief period. His new political party, the moderate but Islamist-leaning Justice and Development Party, has ruled Turkey since 2002. The country has since seen enormous economic expansion, although secularists criticize his party’s social reform policies, which include a failed attempt to illegalize adultery, a move to re-draft the constitution to allow female students to wear Islamic-style headscarves at universities, and stiff taxation on alcohol. The working classes from rural areas, however, herald his policies.

Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the PKK, is currently serving a life sentence as the sole inmate in a prison within Istanbul city limits on the island of Yassiada in the Sea of Marmara. He became involved in politics while studying political science at Ankara University, founding the PKK in 1978 with fellow students. He fled Turkey before the military coup in 1980, and commanded the PKK from bases in Syria. In 1984, the organization launched its armed struggle for an independent Kurdish state in Turkey. Ocalan remained in exile in Syria until he was expelled in 1998; he wandered through a series of countries until his arrest in Kenya in February 1999. He was convicted of treason and sentenced to death in June 1999. Turkey commuted the death sentence to life imprisonment in 2002. In 2003, the European Court of Human Rights issued a non-binding ruling that Ocalan did not receive a fair trial and his human rights were violated by the delay in bringing his case to court. Today, he allegedly advises the PKK through his lawyers. According to the BBC, some Kurds celebrate him as a hero, although Turks generally regard him as a “terrorist” and “child killer.” There is a timeline of recent events in the capture and trial of Ocalan on the BBC’s website.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan, speaking to CNN Turk on Oct. 9, said that Turkey was determined in its fight against the terrorist PKK. Babacan stressed that Turkey is in close contact with both the Iraqi administration and the US over the presence of the PKK in northern Iraq.

On Oct. 19 Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in an editorial in The Wall Street Journal that while the question on the events of 1915 concerning the Armenian community in the then-Ottoman Empire has arisen within the U.S. government before, it has never been as politicized as it is right now under the recent U.S. House resolution. He also calls attention to what he sees as Armenia’s obstinacy towards opening dialogue.

Turkish writer Ismet Berkan’s column, which runs in the Turkish daily Radikal, supports the government’s decision to enter Iraq. Berkan blames the provisional government in northern Iraq for the recent spate in civilian attacks: “All of the PKK’s logistics and training headquarters are in northern Iraq, as militants enter Turkey via Iraq, launch attacks and then go back to Iraq. Turkey has always held the occupying U.S. and the central Iraqi government responsible for this. But actually the control is in Barzani’s hands. If somebody is held responsible, it should be Barzani.”

According to Ekurd.net, a staunchly pro-Kurdish Web site, Turkey feels that the lack of U.S. and Iraqi action against the PKK has “forced” it to crack down on the rebels:“Iraqi Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi arrived in Turkey for talks Tuesday as Ankara sought parliamentary approval for a military incursion into ‘Kurdistan region/northern Iraq’ against Kurdish PKK rebel bases.” Hashemi, who flew in to Istanbul, was scheduled to meet Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and President Abdullah Gul in the Turkish capital of Ankara. His visit came a day after the Turkish government formally submitted a motion to its parliament asking for a green light to launch attacks on PKK rebels based in northern Iraq. Both Iraq and the United States have urged Turkey not to follow through on the incursion threat, but Turkey argues its hand has been forced by the lack of US and Iraqi help cracking down on PKK activities.

In an op-ed from June 8, 2007, The New York Times stated that Turkey’s idea to assault northern Iraq is the result of longstanding geopolitical displeasure: “[An incursion by the Turkish army into Iraq] would infuriate Arabs, who would resent any Turkish return to areas once ruled by the Ottoman Empire. It would finish off any remaining hope of Turkey joining the EU. And it would put a huge strain on Turkey’s fragile democratic politics. These [PKK] strikes have roused powerful passions in Turkey, stoked by generals eager to regain their primacy over the civilian government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, which military leaders loathe for its roots in Islamic politics. Turkey’s feud with the PKK is inextricably tied to other conflicts and rivalries inside Iraq. The most directly relevant is the tug of war between the Kurds, Arabs and Turkmens over the oil-rich region of Kirkuk. Ankara’s fear is that a quasi-independent, Kurdish statelet on its borders could embolden Turkey’s 15 million-strong Kurdish minority to demand autonomy or independence.”

Christopher Hitchens, a pundit and self-professed “contrarian,” argues on his Slate blog, “Fighting Words,” that because of what he sees as Kurdish commitment to rooting out terrorist groups in northern Iraq, the U.S. has a moral duty to protect the Kurds and the region: “In [Kurdistan], the local leadership has done almost everything that could have been asked of it by the United Nations or the United States. It maintains its own security, does not require foreign troops, has put an end to sectarian warfare among Kurds, fights against al-Qaida with some success, maintains a high regional standard for pluralism and democracy, and has enough left over to contribute soldiers to the policing of Baghdad and Fallujah.”

The Economist examines the connection between the threatened invasion of Iraq and the resolution pending in the U.S. Congress. The article examines Turkey’s motives and concludes that “if Turkey wants to fulfill its dreams of being a regional power and an inspiring example of how Islam and democracy can co-exist, it must make peace with all its citizens, including its Kurds. And it should find a way to face up to its past.

For more information on Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Justice and Development Party, please see our Beyond the Headlines story on Turkish president Abdullah Gul titled "Turkey Elects President With Ties to Islamism."