Memo to the Media: Talking Turkey and The Kurds
Memo to the Media: Talking Turkey and The Kurds
By Suzanne Rosenberg
February 23, 2008
It has been difficult for the press to keep up with all the political, military, and civilian gains and setbacks in Iraq, but now a new "front" has emerged with the Turkish "invasion" in the north.
It has been difficult for the press to keep up with all the political, military, and civilian gains and setbacks in Iraq, but now a new "front" has emerged. One of the unintended and disastrous consequences of the U.S. attack on Iraq is the current Turkish "invasion" of northern Iraq. At latest count some ten thousand troops are suspected of moving into the north of Iraq, ostensibly to deter members of the guerrilla group, the PKK or Kurdish Worker's Party.
Here is a kind of primer for journalists just coming to this issue.
Currying favor with the Turks for fly-by missions and other overland access to Iraq during the war has no doubt emboldened the Turkish leadership to act more aggressively regarding their own internal issues with its Kurdish minority, especially in the south. This has led to increased tensions on the border of southern Turkey and within Kurdish northern Iraq.
Independent institutions, political autonomy and economic development were often pointed to as the strengths of this unusual region of Iraq,before the war: an anomalous oasis of calm with budding democratic and free market institutions in Iraq and often in all of the Arab Middle East.
We convinced the Kurds of Iraq's north not to attempt cessation and independence in the days leading up to and right after the U.S. invasion, and assured them of our intentions to assist them should they need to guard their autonomy against any possible Turkish intentions. But it now appears that Turkish intentions are unclear.
While there is no excuse for the often violent and hostile acts of the PKK, a threatened autonomous Kurdistan might be expected to produce some such activity at least in the short run. Turkey's response to these changes and challenges confronting the Kurdish North and its own country is clearly quite heavyhanded and might better be achieved through diplomatic initiatives as opposed to military means.
And it might be pointed out, that this military method against a minority group has served Turkey ill in its past. If Turkey truly intends to live peaceably alongside any sort of relatively autonomous Kurdish region on its southern border, diplomacy rather than military action will reassure those within the region and outside of it.
Most tragically, Northern Iraq's Kurds find their autonomy, independence and "democratic development" increasingly threatened. It has been compromised by the war and political and military developments in the south. The violence of the south is slowly finding its way to the north, with increasing corruption, tribal enmity, and encroaching terrorist activity. The north has been sacrificed to the volatile Iraqi political mix playing out for oil resource wealth and political power.
So, unfortunately, northern Iraqi Kurds find themselves in a potentially very dangerous and volatile "squeeze play" brought on by the power plays of the Turks in the North, the seemingly unending chronic dispute between Shia and Sunni Iraqis in the South -- and the continued confounding occupation of Iraq by the United States.
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Suzanne Rosenberg (
[email protected]) is a political scientists and freelance writer in Teaneck, N.J. She has written often for E&P on Middle East issues and the media.