Turkey Rediscovers the Middle East

F. Stephen Larrabee

From Foreign Affairs, July/August 2007

Summary:  In a departure from its traditional foreign policy, Turkey is now becoming an important player in the Middle East. Turkey's growing concern over Kurdish nationalism has brought Ankara closer to the governments of Iran and Syria, which also contend with restive Kurds at home. Although troubling, this shift could be an opportunity for Washington and its allies to use Turkey as a bridge to the Middle East.

F. Stephen Larrabee holds the Corporate Chair in European Security at the RAND Corporation.

Özal's hopes proved illusory on both counts. The strategic partnership with the United States never materialized, and Turkey's chances at membership in the European Community hardly improved. Economically, Turkey paid a high price for its support of the U.S. military campaign: it lost billions of dollars in pipeline fees and trade. Politically, it was left facing a major escalation of its Kurdish problem. The establishment of a de facto Kurdish state in northern Iraq under Western protection gave new impetus to Kurdish nationalism and provided a logistical base for attacks on Turkish territory by the Kurdistan Workers' Party, the violent Kurdish separatist group known as the pkk. For many Turks, the war was, as the veteran Turkey watcher Ian Lesser has noted, "the place where the trouble started."

The Gulf War also reinforced Turkish sensitivities regarding national sovereignty. Generally speaking, the Turks have been wary of allowing the United States to use their facilities for non-nato operations; Özal's decision to allow the United States to use Turkish military facilities to fly sorties into Iraq was the exception, not the rule. After the Gulf War, Turkey allowed the United States, the United Kingdom, and France to use its bases to monitor the no-fly zone over northern Iraq, but under significant constraints, including the requirement that the agreement to use the bases be renewed every six months. In recent years, the Turkish government has imposed increasing restrictions on U.S. operations out of the Incirlik air base, in southern Turkey. Although Ankara has allowed the Pentagon to use Incirlik to transport troops and materiel to Afghanistan and Iraq, it has refused to permit the United States to station combat aircraft at the base or use it to fly combat missions in the Middle East or the Persian Gulf.

The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 drew Turkey more deeply into the vortex of Middle Eastern politics. From the outset, Turkish leaders had strong reservations about the invasion. They had no love for Saddam Hussein, but he provided stability on Turkey's southern border -- they worried that his overthrow might fragment Iraq while strengthening Kurdish nationalism, thereby jeopardizing Turkey's security. Since the invasion, the Turkish leadership's worst fears have been realized. Iraq has become a breeding ground for international terrorism, and it faces possible collapse. Iran's influence has increased in Iraq and in the region more broadly. The Iraqi Kurds' drive for autonomy -- and, eventually, formal independence -- has gained momentum. Turkish officials are concerned that the creation of a Kurdish state on Turkey's southern border could exacerbate separatist pressures among Turkey's own Kurdish population and pose a threat to the country's territorial integrity.

This is a serious concern. Turkey has witnessed an upsurge of violence by the pkk over the past few years. For over two decades, the pkk has waged a guerrilla war in southeastern Turkey, killing more than 35,000 Turks and Kurds. After the capture of its leader, Abdullah Öcalan, in 1999, the pkk declared a unilateral cease-fire, and the violence temporarily subsided. But the group took up arms again in June 2004. Since January 2006, it has launched repeated attacks on Turkish territory from sanctuaries in the Kandil Mountains, in northern Iraq, killing several hundred Turkish security forces.

The Erdogan government has repeatedly requested U.S. military assistance to help eliminate pkk training camps in northern Iraq. But Washington has been reluctant to take military action. With its forces already stretched thin, the Pentagon claims it cannot spare the troops, which it needs to combat the insurgency elsewhere in Iraq. Moreover, U.S. officials fear that intervening against the pkk could unsettle northern Iraq, which is more stable than the rest of the country. The Kurds have been the staunchest backers of U.S. policy in Iraq, and without their support, hope for keeping the country together is slim.

Washington's di/dence has contributed to an alarming rise in anti-American sentiment throughout Turkey. (A poll conducted by the Pew Charitable Trusts in June 2006 showed that only 12 percent of Turks viewed the United States positively.) Many Turks consider Washington's position to be tacit support for the pkk and evidence of a double standard: as they see it, the United States has invaded two countries -- Afghanistan and Iraq -- to eliminate terrorist safe havens but now refuses to help Turkey do the same.

These problems are compounded by the potentially explosive situation concerning the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, which sits atop one of the world's largest oil deposits and whose status is to be determined by a referendum before the end of the year. Over the past several years, hundreds of thousands of Kurds who were evicted during Saddam's campaign to "Arabize" Kirkuk in the 1970s and 1980s have returned to reclaim their homes and property. Now, the Kurds of Iraq are seeking to make Kirkuk the capital of the Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq. But Turkish officials are concerned by the city's increasing "Kurdization." Ankara wants power to be shared by all ethnic groups in the city and the referendum to be postponed in the hope that the city's status can be clarified another way. If the Iraqi Kurds try to force the issue, Ankara could be provoked to take military action, which would exacerbate instability in Iraq and the region as a whole.

THE ENEMY OF MY ENEMY

Turkey's greater activism in the Middle East has also been reflected in its effort to strengthen ties to Iran and Syria. Ankara's relations with Tehran and Damascus were strained in the 1980s and 1990s, in part because Iran and Syria supported the pkk in their effort to destabilize Turkey. But relations have significantly improved in recent years, thanks to the three governments' shared interest in containing Kurdish nationalism and preventing the emergence of an independent Kurdish state on their borders.

Turkey's cooperation with Iran has intensified considerably, particularly in the security field. During Prime Minister Erdogan's visit to Tehran in July 2004, Turkey and Iran signed a security cooperation agreement that branded the pkk a terrorist organization. Since then, the two countries have stepped up cooperation to protect their borders. Like Turkey, Iran faces security problems in its Kurdish-populated areas: over the last year, an Iranian group affiliated with the pkk, the Party for a Free Life in Iranian Kurdistan, has launched attacks against Iranian security officials. Tehran has retaliated by shelling pkk bases in the Kandil Mountains.