Editorial

Ever since Enver Pasha threw in the lot of the Ottoman Empire with the Central Powers in 1914, Turkey has a record of acting against its own best interests in foreign affairs. Now it seems that Turkey’s miscalculated policy on the Iraq invasion, may have brought about the very thing that the Turks had been seeking to avoid — the de facto creation of a Kurdish state.

Turkey’s refusal to support the American and British invasion of Iraq was motivated by venal rather than moral grounds. Though the man in the street saw Washington’s imminent attack to be useless bloodletting and an extension of US imperial power, Ankara clearly identified a chance to make a very lucrative diplomatic deal. The Americans had offered money, lots of it, which was sufficient to kick-start the process of economic reform.

But Ankara wanted that and more. It wanted a green light for its armed forces to advance into northern Iraq, under the pretence of coping with a humanitarian flood from Kurdish-controlled areas and protecting the interests of the much smaller ethnic Turkish community in the region. The calculation must have been that in the postwar confusion, Ankara could attain for itself some temporary, but long-term, protectorate status over the oil-rich northern area of Iraq. Turkey would thus have acquired physical control of the northern oilfields while stopping the Kurds from acquiring a strong power base on its borders.

The key drivers of this policy were clearly the Turkish military, not the moderate Justice and Development (AK) Party government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Nowhere in the world is the military mind notable for its subtlety and Turkey is no exception. Ankara set a high and nonnegotiable price — with the result that the Americans gave up and walked away.

Turkey thus loses on every count. No one will praise its government for making a moral stand against the invasion, because it is crystal clear that if its demands had been met, it would have supported the invasion enthusiastically. Washington is not going to forget the massive disruption to its military plans caused by Turkey’s generals, the guys Americans always thought were their NATO buddies, who walked the same walk, talked the same talk and fired the same bullets. Military and civilian aid packages just aren’t going to happen now. Washington will surely whisper in the ears of the World Bank and the IMF to ensure that they give Turkey an altogether harder time from now on.

But perhaps the most major loss has been the opportunity for handling the perceived threat from Kurds in northern Iraq which was done in such a knuckle-headed way. Consider this: The AK Party government has recognized, in part at least, the rights and culture of Turkey’s ethnic Kurds. Ankara could have capitalized upon that good will in the most extraordinary and internationally impressive way.

If, instead of having the generals lining up their divisions on the Iraqi border, supposing Ankara had thrown open the border and said to the Iraqis on the other side, “What do you need? How can we help?” If Turkey had become a conduit of humanitarian assistance into much of Iraq, its fears of a postwar independent Kurdish state could have been treated with widespread sympathy. It might even have made the Kurds themselves think twice about their once implacable foe. But that did not happen.