Turkish Forces Launch Incursion into Iraq
Last night the PKK killed 24 soldiers and injured another 18 in a series of coordinated attacks in Hakkari province, near the Iraqi border. It was the deadliest PKK attack since 1992. Turkish soldiers, air force bombers and helicopter gunships launched an incursion into Iraq today.
Yesterday, a roadside bomb blast killed five policemen and three civilians, including a 4-year-old girl.
If I thought it would work, I'd support the incursion. Turkey most certainly has a right to defend herself. The world would be a much better place, instantly, if the PKK were to disappear from its surface.
But I don't think it will work. The much-discussed "Sri-Lankan solution," in addition to being horrible, couldn't be replicated here. The PKK operates from terrain much more favorable to guerilla war than the Tamil Tigers did--they have high mountains, narrow passes and caves, and unlike the Tigers, they're not enclosed. These kinds of bombings and incursions never ended the conflict before, and there's no reason to think they will now.
But what would? "More democratization," says the prime minister. But I suspect the more democratization there is, the more you'll find that the Kurds don't want to be part of Turkey. That's the thing about democratization: the people who promote it sometimes find they don't care for the results. I'd be fine with an independent Kurdistan if all the Kurds in Turkey wanted it, but the evidence suggests that they don't. So what do you do if you hold a plebiscite and it turns out that 60 percent want their own state? Do you uproot the other 40 percent? Tell them "too bad, Turkey isn't your country anymore?" Would it be possible to separate the populations without massive bloodshed? I doubt it.
So what's left? I don't see democratization going any further in this climate--the Kurdish opening is effectively dead. It looks hopeless to me, and the cross-border operations may well destabilize Iraqi Kurdistan, the one unequivocal success of the Iraq war.
The soldiers who were killed were probably about 20, 21 years old. Conscripts, probably, from poor families--if you're rich, you can pull strings and get out of serving in the southeast. They were babies, and quite possibly they were Kurds themselves. The kids who were injured--well, I don't know what the injuries were, but I have to imagine there were some very serious injuries. Lives destroyed.
I have no idea what the PKK thinks it can achieve through this. Killing a four-year-old girl and a score or terrified young conscripts is hardly apt to advance any legitimate political agenda.
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Comments :
Oct '11
Re: Turkish Forces Launch Incursion into Iraq
Thanks for writing this, Claire. During my second tour in Iraq I made a good friend in a Kurdish bioy named Aran. I often wonder what has become of him. I will always show solidarity with the Kurdish people who want to live in peace. The PKK is a satin on the Kurdish people.
Oct '10
Re: Turkish Forces Launch Incursion into Iraq
Terrorism and attacks on civilians are not part of a legitimate political movement. But, witness Afghanistan today, or India in years past and convince me that terrorism does not succeed.
Mar '11
Re: Turkish Forces Launch Incursion into Iraq
I'm sure the Kurds think it succeeded for the Palestinians.
Re: Turkish Forces Launch Incursion into Iraq
It can succeed in many ways. In this case I think it will succeed in sparking civil war.
Here are comments on my Facebook page that will give you a sense of what some people here think.
And lest you think these are statistics--they're real families.
Dec '10
Re: Turkish Forces Launch Incursion into Iraq
Not to mention Kosovo. There, Albanians (who, as I recall, have an independent homeland called... what's that name? Oh, yeah - Albania) decided to settle in the historic heart of Serbia, achieved demographic superiority, started terrorist activity -- and then got NATO to bomb Serbia until it agreed to permit Kosovar independence.
The operant principle in that conflict was not justice and freedom for ethnic Albanians in Kosovo - if they felt oppressed in Serbia, they had a neighboring homeland in which they would have been free of Serbian ethnic oppression - but rather NATO's (and specifically Bill Clinton's) need for revenge on Serbia for defying the West and creating chaos and horror in Croatia and Bosnia. Since the West didn't act promptly and decisively to prevent Serbians from mass-murdering Vukovar Croats and Bosnian Muslims, the West decided to use Kosovo as a means to punish Serbia.
Kosovo and the push for a Palestinian state are both apt precedents for Kurdish independence and self-determination at the expense of the national sovereignty of Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria.