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The Turkish military and northern
Iraq
By Robert M Cutler
Press
reports have indicated that what separates the United
States and Turkey in their negotiations is the size and
nature of the economic package wanted by Ankara. This is
partly true, but it is not the whole story, and not even
necessarily the most important part of the story.
Military aspects of any Turkish incursion into northern
Iraq and political aspects of northern Iraq's future
are, rather, the more significant sticking points.
Before discussing the latter, it is nevertheless useful
background to review how the level of the economic
package has recently increased.
Ten days ago the
first press reports appearing in American sources
mentioned a size of US$15 billion for the economic
package. This figure increased to $20 billion before
Turkish politicians declared even this insufficient on
the weekend and postponed the planned February 18
parliamentary vote on the presence of American soldiers
on Turkish soil to prepare for the invasion of northern
Iraq. Following intensive negotiations by the two sides
at the highest levels, the figure next quoted in the
press was $26 billion. This number was qualified as the
final American offer.
But even agreement on a
number would not be enough to seal a deal, for the
composition of the package is also disputed. The US is
offering direct grants of about $6 billion, with the
remainder composed of loans and trade concessions.
However, Western diplomats in Ankara are quoted as
saying that Turkey is seeking $10 billion in grants, $15
billion in credits and loans, and nearly $7 billion more
in forgiveness of military debts. (Reported figures that
approach $50 billion probably include the value of
Turkish participation in postwar reconstruction projects
in Iraq.) The subtext of statements by Turkish
government leaders indicates that Ankara may not
consider the deal sealed until it is voted by the US
Congress, which must approve it for the agreement to be
legally binding on the executive branch. But settling
the economic package may be the easy part.
Likewise 10 days ago, there were reports of a
tacit US-Turkish-Kurdish agreement that would permit
between 10,000 and 20,000 Turkish troops to enter
northern Iraq, ostensibly to secure a strip of Iraqi
territory shadowing the border, so preventing
(nonexistent) Kurdish pretensions to political
independence in northern Iraq from bearing fruit. In
fact, the purpose of this deployment would have been to
hunt down armed PKK remnants that withdrew into northern
Iraq when the PKK dissolved itself in the late 1990s and
then re-formed itself as KADEK, focusing on social
action in Turkey rather than armed struggle.
According to that tacit agreement, American
troops would march on Mosul and Kirkuk, and Turkish and
Kurdish elements would agree not to attempt to enter the
cities, while the Turks would reserve the right to do so
if the Kurds did. This agreement was indeed so tacit
that a three-way meeting presided over in Turkey by
Zalmay Khalilzad, President George W Bush's special
envoy to the Iraqi opposition, broke up without manifest
agreement, and with the Americans reduced to warning
both other parties simply to stay away from the two
cities concerned. Relations between the Turkish
authorities and the Iraqi Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP)
have progressively worsened since then, while
Washington's positive rapport with the KDP has created a
bone of conflict with Ankara.
The first figure
circulated in reports - of 10,000 to 20,000 Turkish
troops in northern Iraq - became inflated to 38,000 in
later reports last week. This is about the same as the
number of American soldiers projected to occupy northern
Iraq. Thirty-eight thousand Turkish soldiers would be
enough to restrict severely, if not eliminate, the
autonomy of action of the Iraqi-Kurdish KDP headquarters
in Irbil. As the economic deal faltered, press reports
in Turkey alluded to plans by the country's military
general staff to put in fact twice that number of
Turkish soldiers - a full 76,000 - into northern Iraq,
from where they would march literally halfway to
Baghdad.
This number of Turkish troops could
exert significant political and strategic pressure on
all the major cities in the KDP canton: not only Irbil
(as well as Dohuk) but also the area around Mosul - the
nominal capital of Iraqi Kurdistan under the joint
KDP-PUK regime in the 1990s - not to mention a major
segment of the pipeline taking oil from Kirkuk to
Turkey's port at Ceyhan. And still the dimension and
extent of Turkey's military deployment in northern Iraq
is not the last sticking point.
The Turkish
press has in the past few days given acute voice to the
indignation felt by Turkish military staff over apparent
American insistence, or perhaps naive assumptions, that
Turkish troops in northern Iraq would be under US
command. Perhaps in response to this, hints were made as
recently as Tuesday in Ankara that Turkish troops could
enter northern Iraq with their own battle plan and their
own military objectives. Part of this misunderstanding
between the two sides may have been an initial American
assumption that the US-Turkish campaign in northern Iraq
would have a NATO aegis, creating the possibility for
American command leadership of Turkish troops. But the
Turks were not pleased by this assumption, which
outlived NATO unity over military assistance to Turkey.
As of late Tuesday, Andalou Press Agency
reported that the US and Turkey had "made progress in
political aspects of negotiations and they partially
reached an agreement on [the] 'command' issue". This may
involve allowing Turkish troops a privileged place in
Kirkuk, where Ankara claims special concern with the
Turkmen in the city, or even Mosul itself, but more
probably Irbil. (Irbil and Kirkuk are by population the
two major Turkmen cities in Iraq.) This was not to be a
reversal of the original Turkish-Kurdish understanding
over the mutual non-intervention agreement, brokered by
the US but which fell apart at the meeting presided by
Khalilzad. That is because Kirkuk would be in the canton
of northern Iraq controlled by the Patriotic Union of
Kurdistan (PUK), which - in contrast with the KDP - has
had very good relations with Turkey ever since dropping
support for the PKK some years back.
And yet the
final outcome is still undetermined. American troop
ships will arrive in the region before too long, and
they will have to know by then where to go when they get
there. The Pentagon has an undivulged date by which they
must know whether Turkey is available as a
staging-area/launching-pad, and on which date they will
have to begin implementing backup plans if it is
unavailable: which still would not mean that Turkey
would not intervene unilaterally in northern Iraq. Even
if some sort of joint US-Turkish command were
established - which is far from being certain - nothing
prevents the Turkish military from pursuing its own
objectives in northern Iraq. Indeed, this is to be
expected and has regularly been declared by both
military and political leaders in Ankara. It may be
expected, further, that regardless of any cooperation
between the two sides, actual Turkish war goals in Iraq
will be made no more transparent to the Americans, than
the Americans have made their own war planning to the
Turks.
It remains to be seen at what point the
national interests of Turkey and the United States may
diverge in practice, not only tactically on the ground
but also strategically in the political aftermath of the
war. The first evident conflict regarding the latter
will come when the Turks will push for the Iraqi Turkmen
to be given a prominent role in a post-Saddam Iraqi
government, whereas the Turkmen have been marginalized
in the planning by Iraqi exiles and expatriates as well
as by the American sponsors of the latter. That is when
the military situation on the ground in northern Iraq
after the end of hostilities will first show its
political significance for Baghdad.
Dr
Robert M Cutler is Research Fellow, Institute of
European and Russian Studies, Carleton University,
Canada, http://www.robertcutler.org
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