15.01.2007

The other day Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Iraq has gained more priority over others strategic issues for Turkey. I wish he had explained why? This way we could learn whether he has transcended the conventional official view of thinking how detrimental the likelihood of the birth of an independent Kurdistan in Iraq is for Turkey.

If he has transcended this conventional official view, we could be proud of the versatility of the government in producing a creative foreign policy for it has begun to stagger on the home front. Political Party Laws that create pocket dictators out of party bosses and fiefdoms out of party organizations remain intact. The Election Law led the incumbent Justice and Development Party (AKP) to win two-thirds of Parliament with 26% of the vote that swelled to 34.2 % due to the fact that many of the competing political parties did not succeed in exceeding the 10% election threshold, which is the highest election threshold in the world. Neither the government nor the large parties consider revising these laws since they know that their failure to do so will deepen arguments of legitimacy and stability of the next government as well as the system. The selfish expectation of getting a part of the pie obfuscates their wisdom and blackens their conscience.

Given these facts on the domestic front, how does the AKP government view U.S. President George W. Bush's decision to increase troop levels in Iraq in the face of Turkey's declaration about the heightened importance of developments in Iraq? Let us look at what is transpiring in Iraq and guess what the Turkish government's assessment and its response to these developments are. After all there was no official statement upon the execution of Saddam Hussein.

President Bush decided to send over 20,000 more troops to keep order in the central part of Iraq. This surge strategy definitely runs counter to the outcome of the U.S. midterm elections in November that imposed on the president the obligation of a phased withdrawal plan. Instead, Bush seems to have decided to implement his own plan for an “honorable withdrawal” that may even be considered a victory of some kind. The question is whether the plan is realistic and whether it will work considering the possible impact of any major change in any Middle Eastern country over the entire region.

The president and his colleagues seem to have adopted this strategy through a process of elimination. After considering other options this strategy seems to have appeared as the least harmful choice in a situation of military gridlock. It is not surprising that in the speech in which he announced his new initiative he did not exclude the risk of failure and stressed that he had warned the Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki that the U.S. commitment to his new initiative was not open-ended. His patience would run out soon if he (the United States) does not get the zestful and efficient support the they need. Now as President Bush challenges U.S. public opinion by committing more U.S. troops, he has to make sure that the Shiite-led government of Maliki will not publicly oppose the U.S. troop increase. But all signs point to the opposite. The Maliki government fears that increased U.S. military power, particularly in the Baghdad region, will bring more assertive U.S. influence. This would run counter to the Shiite government's expectation of reduced U.S. authority and establish Shiite dominance in most of Iraq. In fact, Shiite leaders insist that U.S. forces should stay out of Shiite neighborhoods and focus on fighting Sunni insurgents, Al-Qaeda affiliates and Baathist remnants. The hasty execution of Saddam Hussein was a Shiite initiative to further weaken the Sunni front.

There is no doubt that the Shiite political elite is growing impatient to have full control of the government and to exercise power without the constraining U.S. supervision. They fear that as the fight against Sunni insurgents and their foreign allies drags the United States may strike deals with the Sunnis and that might lead to power sharing with them. The paradox is that once the Sunnis were vehemently opposed to the U.S. presence in Iraq and the Shiites (and of course the Kurds) hailed their presence, now the Shiite elite and the government they lead does not really want the United States any more. On the other hand the new U.S. (Bush) initiative intends to break the back of both the Sunni insurgents and the Shiite militias with more military clout and force them to accept a political settlement. Another aim of the “surge” is to retain forces in Iraq for blocking any potential Iranian moves toward the Arabian Peninsula, especially to protect Kuwait and Saudi Arabia against Iran. For the United States believes that Iran has the potential for initiating conflict in the oil rich Gulf region jeopardizing U.S. energy supplies in particular and the West in general. Put in different words, the new Bush initiative aims to put U.S. forces on a strategic defensive role in what seems to be incessantly hostile territories. Minority Sunnis and the Kurds are expected to provide bases for the United States in return for their safety as well as the safekeeping of the country's oil revenues they need for survival.

To the dismay of the Turkish government and military the new U.S. troops that will be deployed to Iraq have no mandate to deter the militants of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) living on the Iraqi side of the southern border of Turkey and waging a guerilla war against this country. Yet the Turkish establishment has no effective instrument for paying back this “insensitivity.” Yet, they expect that sooner or later neighboring countries will be called in to help. But then there is the assiduous contradiction that the neighbors of Iraq do not want a regime that will be born out of Pax Americana. They see that seeds of a long-term crisis fueled by unmitigated hatreds and resentments in pursuit of dominance and revenge for past injustices are being sown. The most serious issue that is emerging is the exacerbation of sectarian differences between Shiites and Sunnis and a Kurdish independence movement that can change the regimes if not the borders in a series of the region's countries. The first issue is true for not only Iraq but also Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon and the Gulf countries and the second issue is true for Syria, Iran, Iraq and Turkey. The wanton intervention in any country in the Middle East by a foreign power or a group of foreign powers may lead to unprecedented dislocation with far reaching results, as it is the case in Iraq. We all understand this now (even Bush and his neocons), but how shall Pandora's box be sealed when all the evil spirits released are running amok?