Turkey wants northern Iraq

Daily Times ^

[Temple Owl]

I just got this $500 globe from my work as a gift.

Boy, those guys at work must really like, admire and respect you.

Nobody ever gave me a globe.

[ChemistCat]

How sad that you believe a nation is defined by its diplomats and politicians.

I think a nation is defined by its people, its traditions, its history, and its vision of the future.

[Beck_isright]

Your assessment is mostly the psycho babble the media wants us to believe. The Turkish military is 110% with us on this one. They want to creat a stable region with the replacement of the regimes in Iran, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria. Ignore the "Islamic" politicians and watch the military. The Turks will not abandon us and vice versa. They are the last buffer to keeping the bear out of the region and we can not lose them. They want more power and importance and can get it with a decisive U.S. victory in Iraq. Remember the first rule of PsyOp: confuse everyone.

[Beck_isright]

I don't think he has a clue about the nation, the region or anything. He speaks from the NEA perspective. Especially when he makes the statement inferring that there are "experts" in the State Department; that's the funniest thing I've read so far this year.

[xm177e2]

How you can justify terrorism?

The terror-bombing of Hamburg during WWII was justified, because it was a reaction to the terror-bombing of London. Nobody would tell Churchill he had no right to hit Hitler back with proportional force. The only reason firebombing Hamburg was a bad idea was that it was a waste of money.

I don't look at the means of the attack--it makes no difference to me whether an F-15 or suicide bomber is used to strike a target--it matters what the target is.

I don't think guerilla resistance to genocidal violence is wrong, even if the guerillas go to the same extremes as the violators. During WWII Jews would have been justified in killing German civilians--which didn't mean they had to, or should have, but they would have not been morally tainted to any severe degree. Violence can be met with violence.

If Israel was engaging in genocidal violence against Palestinians, and refused to negotiate for peace, Palestinian terrorism against Israeli civilians would be justified (Israel isn't doing that, so Palestinian terrorism isn't justified).

The Turks want to control Kurdistan because it's a strategic region: sitting on two major rivers in the part of Kurdistan stolen by Turkey and a bunch of oilfields in the area stolen by Iraq.

The history of Turkey's campaign to utterly obliterate the Kurds as an independent people cannot be ignored. If they continue this campaign of extreme violence into the modern age by destroying a small, peaceful Kurdish democracy, then they deserve anything and everything they get.

I'm not a conservative, I'm a center-right radical.

[Mortimer Snavely]

The problems arise when the Grand Strategies, that is, those policies fundamental to the security of the nation, of allies interfere one with the other.

The USA is very unusual in that its Grand Strategy has mostly been achieved. It may be summed up briefly, thus:

1) US military dominance of North and South America.
2) Domination of the Atlantic and Pacific to ensure that there can be no invasion of North or South America.
3) The stability of, friendship with, or military domination of those countries which line the Pacific and Atlantic.

Since the 11 September attacks, there is a new strategic component:

4) Preventing terrorist attacks on the USA by destroying governments or organizations that wish to launch terrorist attacks on the USA.

Turkey's Grand Strategy has not been achieved. As far as non-naval matters are concerned, although the Turkish military is the dominant force in Anatolia, due to the hostility of her neighbors, it is necessary that she be the dominant regional force, because developing friendly relations isn't likely for a few generations to come, at the very least. This will require Turkish domination of Northern Iraq, and the permanence of Iraq's present geopolitical borders.

In other words, these are issues which simply may not be negotiated, because they are of fundamental importance to Turkish national security.

For the life of me, I do not see how the Grand Strategy of the USA and the Grand Strategy of Turkey conflict.

If you could, to the best of your knowledge, describe Turkey's Grand Strategy as you see it, I think it may be of great help to other members of this forum in understanding Turkish regional concerns.

[Mortimer Snavely]

You are one sick little puppy.

[SpookBrat]

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah....

You're totally mental for justifying terrorism in any form or the murder of innocent Turks because you don't like them for personal reasons. Your argument is no different than Usama and his girlyman friends or Hamas, etc. They use the same logic.

What the hell is a center right radical?

[George W. Bush]

How sad that you believe a nation is defined by its diplomats and politicians.

Look, polling numbers we fully accept (and no Turkish source questions) estimates the opposition of the Turkish voters to be running 85%-95% against letting us in to Turkey under almost any circumstances even if we get a full Security Council resolution authorizing force against Saddam. So it's the diplomats and the politicians and the military who will let us into Turkey if we pay enough and they're willing to do so completely against the wishes of the general populace, no matter how sweetly idealistic your ideas are about the character of a particular ethnic people. In short, if we were respecting the wishes of ordinary Turks, we wouldn't be going in at all. But both America and the Turkish leadership are ignoring Turkish public opinion and it just comes down to how much we pay to rent the country's borders and airbases for a few weeks and Turkey dictating the terms of any victory.

There is absolutely nothing here that indicates anything other than mercenary intent on the part of Turkey. I've yet to see a single statement from their government on the necessity of removing Saddam or even destroying his WMD, the same WMD which alarmed them enough to request NATO protection. It's just money, money, money, wait, wait, wait.

I've almost decided that the only way to explain this charitably would be to assume the newly elected parliament, 90% new legislators, have badly miscalculated.

Personally, I've had enough of it. I don't want Turkey to help us now. General Franks and Rumsfeld say we can do it without them. It's time to proceed with our other plans now. Enough of this changing the terms of arrangements and jacking the price up and Turkey's leaders pretending they received no deadline. Time to leave the bazaar.

[a_Turk]

>> describe Turkey's Grand Strategy as you see it

Help bring democracy to the anti-democratic states around us sothat we may all live in harmony and provide a safe and joyful world for the generations to come...

A fricking pipe dream, it seems sometimes.

[George W. Bush]

A fricking pipe dream, it seems sometimes.

No good deed goes unpunished.

[liberallarry]

I don't think for a moment that they'll massacre anybody<P. So what will they do with the Kurds who don't want them there...and who've said they'll use guerrilla tactics to oppose them?

[Thud]

Sending the deal to your parliament means it won't even be voted on until after the US has conquered Iraq. Those corrupt buggers will be offered mammoth bribes, if they haven't gotten some already, from all sorts of foreign groups to delay or vote no - the French, Iraqis, Saudis, Al Qaeda, Pakistan and maybe even the Koreans (both North and South). All of the bribes will be cheerfully accepted, and your parliamentarians will have a wonderful time soliciting more, during which time they won't vote yes or no lest that stop the flow of bribes.

I'm writing something for publication on Friday to that effect.

[Thud]

"The Kurds are fragmented, but that's mostly because of their circumstances." Notably that they're Kurds.

[Thud]

What we must have is stability until we've gotten Iraqi oil production back up, and acquired a friendly government in Iran. Then we can do without Saudi oil for 18-24 months while things get sorted out there and we restore its oil production under new management (ours).

Then, after we control what is now Saudi oil production, we can let go of Iraq,and its oil,and let Iraq's Shiite majority and the Turks settle who controls the Kurdish areas.

[Thud]

Yeah, the deception plans are coming thick and fast. I knew the Turkish mess wasn't one of them when UPI said the deal was being submitted to the Turkish parliament.

[xm177e2]

Personal reasons? What do the Kurds have to do with me personally?

In the past century, Turkey has gone from a genocidal Muslim dictatorship to a genocidal secularist "military democracy." If Turkey wasn't so intent on dominating the Middle East on the backs of the Kurds, it wouldn't be such a bad place.

It doesn't matter if they use the same logic, because they lie about facts. If you believe in the death penalty, then you probably think we had the right to execute Timothy McVeigh. If the Saudi Arabian government arrested an innocent man, claimed he was behind a terrorist attack, and wanted to execute him on that basis, they would be using the same "logic" as the American Justice Department. And it wouldn't make them right.

[rmlew]

Kirkuk is also a majority Turcoman city. Turcomen (or Turkomen or Turkmen) are ethnic Turks who have lived in northern Iraq for a millenium. They speak Arabic but are discriminated against by Arabs and Kurds.
Turkey wants to protect Turkomen and claim Kirkuk on that basis.

[liberallarry]

An interesting analysis. Perhaps it's right...but my take is different.

I like Jabotinsky's view of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. The two sides have incompatible claims and incompatible cultures - so its a fight to the death. The same may be true of the Turks and Kurds.

We're fighting this war because we believe the present state of affairs is intolerable - the threat to our safety, our power, and the international order is just too great. We believe we have to remake the map of the Middle East to reduce this threat.

Bit if this dispute with Turkey is any indication of what is to come the new map will be drawn with a lot more old-fashioned, brutal realpolitic and a lot less idealistic, democratic-capitalism than we've been led to believe.

[liberallarry]

Here's Krugman's pretty nasty take on the situation.