[R-G] Turkish incursion into Northern Iraq: Military Fiasco, Political Debacle

[Anthony Fenton]

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A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 89 .... March 13, 2008
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Turkish incursion into Northern Iraq: Military Fiasco, Political Debacle
Sungur Savran

The February incursion of the Turkish army into northern Iraq has  
ended in a terrible debacle for both U.S. imperialism and Turkey. The  
two allies are at loggerheads once again, after the thaw in their  
relations achieved at the White House talks between Bush and Turkish  
Prime Minister Erdogan on 5 November 2007. The Turkish government and  
the army are the object of unprecedented criticism by the bourgeois  
media and also by ordinary people. And, to add insult to injury for  
the USA, only three days after the withdrawal of Turkish troops from  
northern Iraq on February 29, a triumphant Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, the  
President of Iran, was shown on television screens around the world in  
Baghdad, presumably all smiles for having achieved the feat of being  
the first Iranian president to visit Iraq under U.S. occupation, 29  
years after the Islamic revolution and 20 years of the deadly war  
between the two countries.

The whole episode of the Turkish incursion was played out as a  
miserable mismanagement of a crisis situation by the two allies, the  
U.S. and Turkey. Although the latter had been bombing the PKK (Kurdish  
Workers’ Party) bases in the north of Iraq since 16 December last  
year, an incursion into the region of Turkish combat troops on 21  
February came as a surprise to the whole world, especially in the  
midst of winter, given the circumstances of the extremely rugged and  
mountainous terrain. The operation was greeted with unreserved support  
by the USA. No lesser a figure than Secretary of State Condoleezza  
Rice immediately voiced “absolute solidarity” with the Turkish war  
effort. The U.S. had already extended lavish support to several rounds  
of Turkish bombing efforts by providing real time intelligence and  
clearance to enter Iraqi airspace, as well as clear diplomatic  
approval. But nothing that was said publicly had been as strong as  
Rice’s words. Yet, only five days later, American support seemed to  
disappear.

The American Rebuke
Robert Gates, the U.S. Defense Secretary said loud and clear, from  
India a day before he was to arrive in Turkey, that Turkey should  
leave northern Iraq as soon as possible. It was a message that he  
repeated the next day in Ankara on at least four different occasions.  
Turkish dignitaries (including the military chief of staff) chose to  
play with fire and declared that the Turkish army would leave only  
when its job was finished (only to withdraw the next morning at four  
a.m!). Bush also intevened from Washington, adding his own voice to  
that of Gates, saying twice, in response to reporters’ questions, that  
Turkey should leave “as soon as possible.”

It is perhaps too early to totally dissect the dynamics behind this  
pitiful comedy. The evidence shows that at the beginning the U.S. had  
supported the wrong operation. Apparently, the permission given to  
Turkey covered a brief incursion into northern Iraq to inflict some  
damage on the PKK before the spring, with a few hundred troops or a  
thousand at most engaged in battle. It turned out that the number of  
Turkish troops was much higher -- ten thousand according to some  
sources. As the operation unfolded, the most influential Turkish media  
declared that the objective was Kandil, the mountains where the  
headquarters of the PKK are located. The Kandil mountains are a good  
200 kilometres from the point of entry of Turkish troops into Iraq.  
All this raised the ire of the Iraqi Kurds (who at the beginning had  
only made minor noises), and even the central government of Iraq. Not  
wishing to fall out with these allies, the U.S. then turned around and  
started chiding Turkey for having misinformed its ally and mentor.  
This becomes transparent in a brief sentence in Gates’ declaration in  
Ankara: “The key point” he said, “is transparency, cooperation, and  
communication.”

Behind this comedy of errors lies, of course, a key contradiction of  
U.S. policy in Iraq. The U.S. is trying to simultaneously entertain  
close relations with Turkey, its longtime NATO ally, and its newly- 
found friends Barzani and Talabani, the Iraqi Kurdish leadership.  
However, Turkey, having oppressed the Kurds on its own territory for  
decades, fears any moves towards autonomy or independence for the  
Kurds in other Middle Eastern countries. So it could not but have  
chosen to conceal information from Iraq, where the Kurds are part of  
the power structure, and the USA. This deep-seated contradiction in  
U.S. Iraq policy had already caused relations between the U.S. and  
Turkey to chill from 2003 to 2007, aggravated by the fact that Turkish  
parliament rejected on 1 March of that year a governent motion which  
practically aimed to make a Northern Front possible during the Iraq war.

The 5 November 2007 meeting at the White House had overcome the rift,  
with the U.S. clearly giving in to Turkish requests for permission to  
go after the PKK in Iraqi territory, probably in return for  
undisclosed commitments on the part of the Turkish government  
regarding Afghanistan and/or Iraq and/or energy transport routes (read  
the isolation of Russia). However, the rapprochement between the two  
countries may turn out to be extremely short-lived. Given the immense  
humiliation and anger now felt by the population in Turkey, it is  
impossible for this turn of events not to inflict damage on U.S.- 
Turkey relations. Both sides of course flatly deny that the Turkish  
decision to withdraw had anything to do with U.S. pressure.  But not a  
single soul in Turkey is prepared to believe these pious incantations.  
So damage there must be. Only  time will tell whether the geniuses of  
crisis management on both sides wil be able to contain the damage.

Military Fiasco
The aims of the Turkish military incursion were never stated clearly.  
This led to exaggerated expectations on the part of Turkish public  
opinion that the PKK was going to be dealt a serious, if not final,  
blow. Jingoistic media discourse of the  “Objective Kandil” kind  
further reinforced these unrealistic expectations. This explains  the  
bitter disppointment felt by the Turkish public at large, poisoned as  
it has been by chauvinistic propaganda toward the Kurds for years now  
(on the Kurdish question and the rights of Kurds, including self- 
determination, see Bullet N.  68). It would not be realistic to think  
that the Turkish army had really set its eyes on dealing the PKK a  
definitive blow. The top brass, after all, has repeatedly made clear  
over time that military incursion into Iraq will not finish off the  
PKK, which by most estimates has a total of around five thousand  
guerrillas inside Turkey and over the border in Iraq.

Whatever the targets originally set, the Turkish army cannot be said  
to have achieved any serious military results in this week-long  
incursion. Official army figures for PKK casualties stands at arouns  
230, while admitted army casualties amount to a mere 27. The PKK, for  
its part, claims that Turkish casualties rise to 125 and its own loss  
is only in the tens. No matter where the truth lies regarding this  
aspect of the matter, the fact that the Turkish military totally  
failed in achieveing its own targets is clearly proved by the case of  
the Zab base of the PKK. For days the Turkish army fought a battle  
with guerrilla forces around this critically important base. It was  
unable to conquer it and evict the PKK. In the light of this, it  
sounds surreal for the Turkish general staff to declare in an official  
statement that the withdrawal decision was taken because the military  
aims of the operation had been fulfilled.

Why, one is tempted to ask, did the Turkish army battle the guerrilla  
forces for days in Zab if the taking of that base was not among the  
aims of the operation? Or conversely, if the taking of the Zab base  
was so important, why was it that the army suddenly folded and left?  
The fact that a Turkish helicopter was felled by the guerrillas and  
many rank officers lost their lives are further evidence of the  
military fiasco suffered by the Turkish army. It was a fiasco not  
because the Turkish army was defeated by the PKK, but because there  
was a stalemate. Given the overwhelming striking power of the Turkish  
military, second in the Middle East to that of Israel alone, this can  
only be seen as a failure, and so it will be perceived by the masses  
in Turkey. The prestige of the Turkish military, an institution much  
revered and feared, is probably at its lowest ever. This episode bears  
marked resemblance to the historic defeat suffered by Israel in its  
attempted invasion of Lebanon in the summer of 2006. (Ironically,  
Turkey is one of the countries that had sent troops to Lebanon in the  
wake of that episode to help Israel save face!)

Mounting Political Tensions
Turkey is now entering a very delicate phase. All the contradictions  
that have marked Turkish social and political life in the recent  
period are now coming to a head. Alongside the tension deriving from  
the Kurdish question there is the pressure of the U.S. on Turkey to  
get involved in its permanent war in the Middle East and Eurasia. The  
conflict between the two wings of the Turkish bourgeoisie, the pro- 
Western-secularist and the semi-Islamist, a conflict that had been  
dormant under the impact of the centrality of the Kurdish question,  
has again broken out into the open with the initiative of the  
government to lift the ban on the wearing of the headscarf by  
university students. And, for the first time in longer than a decade,  
workers’ struggles seem to be rising, albeit timidly, as a major  
economic crisis in the world economy appeares to be developing and one  
that will surely hit Turkey as well.

Last year was marked by the serious tension in Turkey due to the  
prospect of the election of a major leader of the pro-Islamic  
government party as president, a process interrupted by a military  
pronunciamiento but finally consummated after the electoral victory of  
the government party. An explosive year seems promised again for  
Turkey, next to which the tensions of 2007 will look pale.

Sungur Savran is editor of the newspaper Isci Mucadelesi (Workers'  
Struggle) in Istanbul, Turkey (www.iscimucadelesi.net).

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