February 26, 2008

TURKEY'S current military offensive inside northern Iraq has touched off a crisis - one to which several other players in the region have contributed. Although the ultimate responsibility for ending this crisis falls on Turkey, all of the others, including the United States, must do their part to prevent a larger regional conflagration.

Turkey's ostensible reason for sending 10,000 troops into the mountainous north of Iraq is to punish the separatist guerrilla group known as the PKK for its terrorist operations and attacks on Turkish soldiers inside Turkey. However, the Kurdish Regional Government in the north of Iraq has charged that Turkey has an ulterior motive: to destabilize that relatively peaceful and prosperous area.

The Kurds of northern Iraq fly their own flag; they have their own disciplined armed forces, known as pesh merga; and they prohibit the Iraqi army from setting foot on their soil. The Kurdish Regional Government suspects that Turkey's fiercely nationalistic generals want not only to deliver a blow to the PKK, but also to show that they will not tolerate independence for the Iraqi Kurds. This is a reasonable assumption. Nationalistic forces in Turkey make no effort to hide their anxiety about self-determination for Kurds in Iraq. They worry that Turkish Kurds - who have recently gained greater cultural and linguistic rights because of Turkey's efforts to gain acceptance by the European Union - will contemplate an autonomous Kurdish region in Iraq and demand similar self-government for themselves.

This intersection of unfounded paranoia with genuine security concerns has to be addressed by the Bush administration, the government in Baghdad, and others who stand to suffer if Turkey's violation of Iraqi sovereignty sets off a spiral of destabilizing violence. Already the Shi'ite militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr has threatened to send fighters to the north if Turkish troops do not withdraw from Iraqi soil. And Turkey is warning that it may leave troops in northern Iraq, to block PKK routes into southeastern Turkey, even after its main invasion force returns home in two or three weeks.

The Bush administration should lean on Turkey, a NATO ally, to stop its helicopter gunship and artillery attacks - which are hitting civilian villages, bridges and roads - and withdraw its forces immediately. America's only true ally in Iraq, the Kurds, should be asked to prevent the PKK from conducting cross-border operations in Turkey.

The soundest way for Turkey to thwart the PKK, though, is to grant full cultural rights to Turkish Kurds and to devote economic development funds to the undeveloped southeast. Turkey ought to be a showcase for minority rights in the region - instead of the power that accelerates the ethnic and sectarian mayhem that is tearing that region apart.