Turning Turkey:
The Kurdish Gambit
C. L. Cook

PEJ News
December 28, 2005


Turkey seems left with little room to manoeuvre. Islam Online reported earlier this month, Israeli ex-commando units, now seconded to various MOSSAD-connected corporations, are "operating" in northern Iraq, training what look to be Kurdish shock-troops. It's not exactly news. The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh wrote about this last year. But what is interesting is the recent confluence of media and diplomatic activity beginning to hum around Ankara.

While Porter Goss delivered probably the worst news his Turkish counterparts could fear (not only was America and its western allies preparing to further enflame the "Islamic Street" with air assaults against Iran and Syria, assaults Turkey was expected to go along with, and perhaps allow launched from U.S. air bases within the country), but that Israeli agents working with the hated Kurds were also operating training camps for commandos on the border's edge. To a population already incensed with the Iraq war and occupation and resentful of recent Turkish diplomatic associations with Israel, the prospect of expanded U.S. and Israeli operations promises nothing but pain for the government.

It all comes at a sensitive time.

Turkey, a long frustrated suitor to the European Union, is suffering a bout of bad press as of late. Human Rights Watch, an international NGO with a reputation of carrying water for New World Order-style initiatives in the past, mounted a multi-issue focus on Turkey commencing in late September '05. Women's and press freedoms, and police crack-downs on dissent are mentioned, but first among these, the defence of Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk, facing imprisonment for "Un-Turkish" assertions concerning the Armenian genocide of the early Twentieth Century.

Pamuk publicly challenged both the government and Turkey's citizens to acknowledge the pogrom committed against Turkey's Armenian minority; a criminal act under Turkish law. In Cyprus too, what is reported as Turkish recalcitrance in granting air and sea port access to the Greek Cypriots has Turkey on the defensive.

Though the HRW publicity campaign is regarded by some in Turkey as a purely political exercise, the effects for the government are worrisome; coming as they do at such a vulnerable time.

Turkey has, if not supported the American actions in Iraq, gone along with the idea of a single, stable Iraq. Preferably an Iraq run by an American client, like Saddam. But Turkey sees the current trend, and the Israeli commandos play no small role here, will lead not to a single, stable Iraq, but a Yugoslavia-like fractured and fractious neighbour. A situation they fear will only empower the Kurds.

And, it's not a fear they face alone.

Syria, Iran, Iraq, and Turkey all share a "Kurdish problem" and the arming and training of Kurdish fighters is of mutual concern. So much so, Turkey has joined in a new pact with both Syria and Iran, the rumoured targets of American, and or Israeli hostilities. 

It all leaves the Turks in a tight stiuation, but worse bodes ill for hopes of peace in the embattled region.



Chris Cook is a contributing editor to PEJ News. He also hosts Gorilla Radio, a weekly public affairs program, broad/webcast from the University of Victoria, Canada. You can check out the GR Blog here.