What to do about the new Kurdistan.

last updated 8 January 2015

Turkey

Derya Sazak

The Iraq war is now menacing Turkey, said Derya Sazak in Istanbul’s Milliyet. The key Iraqi oil city of Kirkuk, home of ethnic Turks known as Turkomans, is already effectively in Kurdish hands. The Kurds are systematically driving out the Turkomans, killing 30 this week alone in an appalling attack on a Turkoman neighborhood. Now the U.S. is calling for implementation of a controversial article of the Iraqi constitution that requires a Kurdish referendum on whether to annex Kirkuk into their autonomous state. This mini-state has long been a headache for us, as it allows Kurdish terrorists from Turkey to maintain bases in Iraq. If the mini-state gets Kirkuk’s oil revenue, it will surely help those terrorists even more in their quest to claim Turkish land. Turkish leaders here are cranking up their war rhetoric. All factors “point to a cross-border operation.” But that would be a mistake—both for Turkey and for the Turkomans we’d be trying to help. We’d simply get a repeat of “what happened when Israel bombed Lebanon”—massive civilian casualties and a public relations disaster, with no strategic gain. That’s why Turkey should calm down and push for a negotiated solution to Kirkuk. If the U.S. knows what’s good for it, it will help. Surely the Americans, already drained from “the Iraqi quagmire,” don’t want to see “more chaos in Turkey.”