As I write, there is much speculation about possible Turkish intervention in northern Iraq designed to root out the supposedly terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK). The PKK continues periodically to strike Turkey from safehouses in the rugged mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan. Turkey, however, would be likely to accomplish little by intervening in northern Iraq (or in Kurdistan) for several reasons: (1) interventions in the 1990s accomplished little; (2) Turkey would be likely to simply get bogged down, like the United States has, in Iraq;   (3) intervention would largely reverse Turkey’s historic and domestically very popular decision of March 2003 not to intervene in northern Iraq; (4) PKK raids on Turkish targets are also emanating from the PKK’s bases in Turkey, such as in Tunceli (Dersim); (5) the Kurdistan Regional Government has made it clear that it would militarily resist any large-scale Turkish intervention; (6) intervention might also lead to an unwanted clash with the United States; (7) given Turkey’s strong criticism of Israel for intervening in Lebanon in August 2006, Turkish intervention in northern Iraq would look hypocritical, especially since Hezbollah’s explicitly announced goal was the destruction of Israel, while the PKK has never claimed that it wishes to destroy Turkey, and indeed, in recent years, the PKK’s stated goal has been to secure true democracy for the ethnic Kurds within Turkish territory; and (8) Turkey’s intervention would probably hurt its European Union membership chances very badly. Based on all these factors, it would seem that only small border incursions, cross-border shelling, and air attacks would be considered. (Editor’s note: Turkey undertook limited action in northern Iraq this past fall.)

Furthermore, the legal and political condition of the Turkish Kurds is changing dramatically. Long gone are the days when they were dismissed as mere “mountain Turks” and the very term “Kurd” was treated as a kind of four-letter word. The Turkish Kurds no longer scare so easily and feel freer to express themselves. What has given rise to this new awakening? Despite Totten’s assertion about “the moral corruption from the likes of the PKK,” a recent trip to Diyarbakir, the unofficial capital of Turkish Kurdistan, found no Kurd wanting to criticize the rebel PKK and its imprisoned leader, Abdullah Ocalan. Rather, there is pride that the PKK was a formidable force that came close to successfully challenging the Turkish state. In more recent years, the belief is that since the PKK has repeatedly shown a willingness to engage peacefully in the political process, the onus is now on the Turkish state to respond positively. Effectively barred from entry into the Turkish parliament by the 10 percent threshold, the legal Kurdish party called the Democratic Society party (DTP) still managed to gain seats in the recent national elections of July 22, 2007, by having twenty of its candidates elected as independents.

More importantly perhaps, the ruling Justice and Development party (AK) of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan—with its roots in Islamic politics—garnered even more votes from Turkey’s ethnic Kurds by stressing its economic reforms and conservative values. The AK party has come to represent a convergence of moderate, popular Islam with liberal economics, secularism, and moderate nationalism—in other words, a modern democratic Turkey comfortable with its Islamic heritage and seriously working to become fit to join the European Union. The DTP, on the other hand, seemingly erred by focusing more on political and ideological demands but ignoring more immediately important bread-and-butter socio-economic issues.           

Finally, Totten perhaps dismisses too lightly the long-running Kurdish relationship with the State of Israel. Because of its precarious position in the Arab world, and in particular because of the threat formerly posed by Iraq—and now an Iran reputedly attempting to build nuclear weapons—Israel has long taken an interest in Iraqi Kurdistan. Even before the creation of the State of Israel, the Jewish Agency planted an operative in Baghdad. From there, under journalistic cover, Reuven Shiloah, who later became the founder of the Israeli intelligence community, trekked through the mountains of Kurdistan and, as early as 1931, worked with the Kurds to promote Jewish and later Israeli security. Finally, in 1994, accompanied by several Muslim Kurds from Iraq, I visited a Jewish-Kurdish moshav (cooperative community) near Jerusalem. The two Kurdish groups greeted each other like long-lost brothers.

During the 1960s, Israeli military advisers trained Kurdish guerillas as a way to reduce the potential military threat Iraq presented to the Jewish state and also to help Iraqi Jews to escape to Israel. This training operation was code-named Marvad (Carpet). The important defection of an Iraqi air force MiG pilot with his plane to Israel in August 1966 was effected with Kurdish help, while Israeli officers apparently assisted Mullah Mustafa Barzani in his major victory over the government in Baghdad at Mount Hindarin in May 1966. In September 1967, Barzani visited Israel and met with Moshe Dayan, the famous Israeli defense minister. Both the Israeli Mossad and the Iranian Savak of the Shah helped Barzani establish a Kurdish intelligence apparatus called Parastin (Security). These intelligence contacts between Israel and the Iraqi Kurds continued into the 1990s. In 1996, however, Israel and Turkey began to develop a significant alliance that partially reversed the pro-Kurdish sympathies of Israel. Many Kurds believe, for example, that Israeli intelligence agents helped Turkey capture Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the PKK, in February 1999.

Michael M. Gunter
Tennessee Technological University
Cookeville, Tennessee

 

MICHAEL J. TOTTEN RESPONDS:

I’d like to thank Professor Gunter for his thoughtful and well-informed letter. I frankly see little to disagree with here and I learned something from reading it, especially in regard to Israel’s historical relationship with the Kurds in Iraq. This is something conspiracy theorists love to bang on about, and it’s refreshing to see a brief and calmly stated summary of what actually happened from someone who isn’t paranoid and knows what he’s talking about.

There are two points I would like to address, however.

Referring to my proposed American military base in Iraqi Kurdistan, he writes, “But would it really be in the long-term interest of the United States to have a colonial-type outpost surrounded by a huge, hostile majority in the Middle East?”

If an American military base on friendly Kurdish soil can be fairly referred to as “a colonial-type outpost,” all American bases in the Middle East are colonial-type outposts. A base in Kurdistan would be no more surrounded by “a huge, hostile majority in the Middle East” than the American bases in Turkey, Kuwait, and Qatar. I don’t see why building another base at the invitation of the friendliest government in the region would create any more of a problem than the others do. Iraqi Kurdistan is friendlier than any of the others, so it seems to me a smarter place to decamp.

A negotiated diplomatic solution is impossible while Turkey remains so intransigent, but it might become much more likely if the United States was seen by Turkey as a semi-permanent guarantor of Iraqi Kurdistan. The existence of Iraqi Kurdistan is inconvenient for Turkey, but so is the existence of Greece and Armenia. Turkey will one day have to soften up and accept reality for the same reasons the Arab states need to get over their hostility toward the existence of Israel. Far better if the Turks get their reality check from non-aggressive American action than from another ramp-up in terrorism and war by the PKK or like-minded Kurdish absolutists in Turkey.