A new front threatened to open in the Iraq war this week, when the Turkish parliament gave its government authority to send Turkish troops across the border into Iraq. Turkey contends that U.S. troops and Iraqi Kurdish militias
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have not done enough to prevent Kurdish separatists from setting up bases in northern Iraq. In the past two weeks, 31 Turkish soldiers and civilians were killed by Kurds who retreated to Iraq. The U.S. urged Turkey to continue negotiating with Iraqi authorities and refrain from military
escalation. “We are making it very clear to Turkey,” President Bush said, “that we don’t think it is in their interests to send troops into Iraq.”
The Turkish vote comes at a delicate time in U.S.-Turkish relations. Last week, the House Foreign Relations Committee approved a nonbinding resolution condemning the World War I Turkish massacre of Armenians as “genocide.” Most historians agree that more than 1 million Christian Armenians died in an official ethnic cleansing operation by the Ottoman Empire. Turkey has always disputed that account, and last week, it angrily recalled its ambassador from Washington and warned that “further measures” could be taken if the full House approves the resolution.
What the editorials said
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“It is madness for Congress to pour gasoline on this fire,” said The Dallas Morning News. We can all agree that Turkey’s refusal to acknowledge the Ottoman-era massacres is “despicable.” But the timing of the resolution could not be worse. The last thing the U.S. needs is one of its NATO allies, Turkey, shooting at one of its Iraqi allies, the Kurds. Even if the Turks don’t invade Iraq, they could respond to the genocide resolution by denying U.S. troops access to Turkish military bases vital to supplying the war. “Congress has not fully grasped what taking this morally correct but diplomatically
imprudent stance could cost.”
No wonder the Turks are taking this badly, said The Christian Science Monitor. Nobody likes to be preached to, especially by the perpetrators of Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay. It would far more helpful for the U.S. to be searching its own soul, not issuing judgments about the shortcomings of others. “At a time when the world questions U.S. moral standing, moral pronouncements from Washington ring hollow.”
What the columnists said
Condemning the genocide is entirely justified, said Gary Kamiya in Salon.com, even if it has negative “short-term consequences.’’ Turkey’s slaughter of the Armenians was “the first holocaust—one of the worst crimes of the 20th century.” Hitler actually invoked it as a precedent, justifying his invasion of Poland by noting that the world had done
nothing to help the Armenians. The Turks’ threats only prove that in finally recognizing the truth of what happened 90 years ago, the congressional resolution should be seen “not as an example of American grandstanding but of American courage.”
Tell that to the U.S. soldiers who will have to live with those consequences,
said Fred Gedrich in National Review Online. A Turkish incursion into Iraq could “complicate recent American successes in the country” by destabilizing the one part of Iraq that has been relatively calm. And a Turkish refusal to allow U.S. cargo to traverse its territory would have “enormous implications” for the war effort, as it would take months to reroute supplies through Jordan or Kuwait.
These costs could be worth it, if the resolution actually makes Turkey admit its culpability, said Niall Ferguson in the Los Angeles Times. But that’s highly unlikely. After all, the atrocities were committed by the Ottoman Empire, which collapsed at the end of WWI, not by the current Turkish Republic, whose secular government “offers the best available evidence that Islam and democracy can coexist.” As Turkish troops mass on the Iraqi border, we should be working to increase our leverage in Ankara, not passing “gratuitous” resolutions that decrease it.
What next?
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki asked Turkey for more time to take action against Kurdish rebels operating in Iraq. He offered to allow Turkish troops to join Iraqi troops in military operations “if necessary.” As for the House genocide resolution, Democrats indicated that support was fading in the face of intense pressure from the White House and Turkish threats. “I think it is a good resolution and horrible timing,” said Democratic Rep. Mike Ross of Arkansas.
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