Turkey Still Massed on Iraqi Kurdish Border

Djelloul Marbrook

One of the events that has overtaken General Petraeus’ report—remember, he has already told the BBC we need to stay 18.jpgput—is the positioning of 160,000 Turkish troops along Iraq’s northern border. This may well prove to be the event that overtakes everything else.


Turkey, a Sunni nation and a member of NATO, has been telling the government of Nuri al-Maliki in Baghdad for more than a year now that it must curb pan-Kurd ambitions in northern Iraq. The situation is far more volatile than the press has described. The Shias have their own militias. The Kurds have the well-trained Pesh Merga, which is in fact a standing army. But Iraq’s Sunnis have only their tribes. That in itself is enough to explain Sunni concerns.


The Kurds would like to see an independent Kurdistan. Considering the large Kurdish minorities in Iran and Turkey, it is not difficult to see why Shia Iran and Sunni Turkey are worried. Short of independence, the Kurds would like a semi-autonomous Kurdistan, which would contain Mosul’s rich oil fields. The Kurds could then continue to agitate for a greater Kurdistan, perhaps even arming militants inside Iran and Turkey.


Where does this leave us? In the soup, where we have been from the beginning. Consider these combustibles:


—Turkey has not set foot on Arab land since the fall of the Ottoman Empire.


— Iran and Turkey are traditional enemies. Iran would feel as threatened by an expanded border with Turkey as the Arabs feel threatened by a militant Iran.


—The Sunni Arabs have more in common with the Turks than they have with the Iranians, but the reappearance of Turkish soldiers on Arab land would be viewed with alarm.


—There are more than 100 million people in the world of Turkish origin. Turkey, a secular nation with an Islamist party in power, regards itself as the protector of these people. There are large Turkish minorities in Iran and Afghanistan, and people of Turkish origin are spread throughout Central Asia.


—Turkey has no oil, but it is host to oil pipelines. Moving into northern Iraq would give Turkey control of its oil fields. The Turks would say they have come only to stabilize the situation, but that is our story too, and we have already witnessed how many people in the world believe us.


If we are soon presented with a situation in which Turkey has as many troops in Iraq as we do it will change the entire equation, and yet the Washington establishment—the press, the government, the think tanks, the industry lobbyists—are all silent about an eventuality that would change everything in a thin minute.