I'll keep this short. Let's suppose Turkey "invades" Iraqi Kurdistan tomorrow. What do you think will happen? If you've recommended this diary or any of a fair number of like minded that have been posted during the last 12-18 months, chances are it's not what you think will happen. I'll explain below the flip.
I would like to offer a disclaimer first: if you have a country full of different groups all armed to their teeth, and generally hostile to one another, the last thing you want is yet another army inserting itself. Iraq is a powder keg, and the U.S. policy there has been led by reckless, incompetent ideologues. So I sympathize with the concern that many people here have expressed regarding the situation on the border between Iraq and Turkey. I just think some of the fears and warnings are overblown and based on misunderstandings and lack of information. I would like to contribute towards rectifying this situation - that is all.
What would happen? Not all that much, actually. The Turkish army would kill or capture a bunch of PKK fighters and destroy as much of the PKK's infrastructure as they can (i.e., blow up stuff). After a few weeks, the Turks return north. The PKK rebels, meanwhile, retreat as far into the mountains as they can, try to stay alive during the winter, and then regroup and resume their campaign of terrorism north of the border, trying to provoke the Turkish authorities into overreacting so the people of Turkish Kurdistan would rise up to fight for their independence.
And that's pretty much it. No escalation. No war. The Kurdish authorities in Iraq and the Maliki government would condemn the incursion; BushCo, the EU, and the UN would call it unhelpful and express their concern. And that'll be the end of it.
How can I be so sure? Because that's exactly what happened the last few times Turkey "invaded" Iraqi Kurdistan: in 1992, 1995, and twice in 1997.
Here's some very brief yet essential background - consider this a companion piece, if you will, to DHinMI's excellent FP story from three days ago:
Who is the PKK? The PKK is a Marxist terrorist group which has been trying for nearly four decades to incite an uprising among the Turkish Kurds to fight for their independence. They operate from bases in the mountains that straddle the border between Turkey and Iraq and they're financed by remittances from Kurdish exiles living all over the world, but particularly in Europe. Up to this point, the situation in Turkish Kurdistan is quite similar to the one in Kosovo at the outset of the war there, although the PKK has never been nearly as successful as the Albanian KLA was in the 90s. So what's the difference?
The PKK and the Kurdish authorities in Iraq The crucial difference between the current situation in Turkish Kurdistan and the one in Kosovo in the 90s is that the KLA had the barely concealed support of the Albanian government. Not so in the case of the PKK and the Kurdish authorities in Iraq - not at all. The Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq is dominated by the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). These are the guys supported by the U.S. On the contrary, the Peshmerga of Iraqi Kurdistan have fought the PKK for decades. As a recent analysis on STRATFOR puts it:
With the KRG facing pressure from Turkey on one side and most likely Iran on the other, it will be forced to order the peshmerga to crack down on the PKK. (Peshmerga-PKK clashes have occurred in recent months whenever Ankara has increased the rhetorical pressure.) Turkey also can use the PKK issue to sustain pressure on the Iraqi Kurds on other issues -- especially oil deals and Kirkuk autonomy. The Iraqi Kurds' current priority is to protect the flow of foreign investment, which involves keeping the Turks at bay. The KRG will be willing to rein in the PKK for this purpose.
The relevance of the post-Desert-Storm-pre-U.S.-invasion incursions Turkey also invaded Iraqi Kurdistan in the 1980s - with the blessings of Saddam's regime. What makes the incursions of the 1990s so significant is that the Peshmerga were already in charge in Iraqi Kurdistan after Desert Storm. Admittedly, they were engaged in a vicious civil war between the KDP and the PUK for a significant part of the decade. What matters is, though, they did nothing to stop the Turkish Army. There isn't much reason to assume they would this time.
The bottom line. The people who predict war between Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan are typically missing three key facts:
- The PKK is not supported - but on the contrary is fiercely opposed - by the Kurdish Regional Government and the Peshmerga.
- BushCo has supported the Regional Government and the groups forming it, not the PKK (in 2002, even before the invasion of Iraq, the PKK was #16 on the State Department's Foreign Terrorist Organizations List).
- The Turkish government has exactly zero interest in a larger war in the region. Again, check out DHinMI's excellent piece for a detailed examination of the situation inside Turkey.
It is true that the Turkish government doesn't want to see an independent Kurdistan - not in Sulaymaniyah, Erbil, and Dahuk, and not anywhere else on the planet. It shares this sentiment with the Iranian and Syrian governments. These countries, together with what used to be Iraq, agree on one thing, and one thing only - to keep the Kurds down. But that's not what the current conflict is about. This one is about the PKK operating inside Turkey. Failure to understand the difference between these two conflicts is at the root of much of the current alarmism on dKos.