Framing Kurdistan
PKK in North Iran has become a focal point between Iraq, Turkey and the United States.
Iran with its own share of Kurds and the United Nations are not involved in the resolving of this issue.
There are four options on the table.
(a) Do, more or less, nothing
(b) A covert action as proposed by the United States to behead the PKK from its leadership
(c) A cooperative action between Iraq and Turkey to destroy the PKK camps in Northern Iraq
(d) A full scale (unilateral) invasion of Northern Iraq by Turkey which has a well-trained, well-equipped army of 250,000 near the border
If you cross reference the options with (my view of) the preferences of the parties involved, you get the following result.
I have given the Iraqi Kurds their own column because their interests do not necessary parallel the interests of the Turkish Kurds (the PKK) and those of the central government of Iraq.
It is clear that the first option, Do, more or less, nothing, gets the most votes. This option is preferable from the viewpoint of Iraq, the United States and the Iraqi Kurds.
All the other options would mean an increase of complexity within the Iraq situation with a lot of possble but ‘unintended’ and unwanted consequences.
See the causal map at the end of this article for some possible scenarios.
In the next table, the likelihood of the options are shown.
The option, Do, more or less, nothing is, from a Turkish perspective, out of the questions. Through remarks of Turkish leadership they have committed themselves fully towards action.
The covert action as proposed by the United States to behead the PKK from its leadership isn’t covert anymore. The news leak by Robert Novak meant “such an operation had now become null and void”.
A cooperative action between Turkey and Iraq is almost certainly. It is not a too large investment in terms of money and people; it is not too disruptive for the complex situation in Iraq; it is sufficiently large that it could satisfy the demands of the Turkish people, and it might even work.
But …if this Turkey-Iraq action is not effective and PKK executes some high-profile actions, then the full scale (unilateral) invasion of Northern Iraq moves from likelihood ‘Even Chance’ to the likelihood ‘Almost Certainly’.
And, if Turkey decides for a full scale (unilateral) invasion of Northern Iraq, there is nothing that the other parties can do to prevent that. Except maybe for a full war between Turkey and the United States, but that is most unlikely.
For PKK this is, in a weird way, the best that could happen. See my previous posting, PKK should do ‘whatever it takes’ to provoke Turkey to invade Northern Iraq
However, for Iraq, United States and the Iraqi Kurds this is the worst scenario and probably the strongest so for the Iraqi Kurds. They are nicely creating their own part of Kurdistan within a very weak Iraq federation. They just have to play along and at the right moment pull the rug underneath the central federation and declare independence.
This cozy scenario will be violently disturbed if Turkey invades Northern Iraq because the PKK will keep fighting and at the same time move out of the mountain areas towards the more urban areas where they can submerge with the Iraqi Kurds. This would also mean an occupation of Northern Iraq by Turkey; destruction of infrastructure, civilian casualties, a large setback regarding their Kurdistan vision.
On, the other hand, the Iraqi Kurds are probably also the only one in a position to start a dialogue with the PKK to convince them to stay quiet and not to jeopardize the possibility of an Iraqi Kurdistan.
And, as a last resort, fitting the situation of a more or less autonomous Kurdish region in Iraq, (Policy Claim:) the Iraqi Kurds should remove with force the PKK from their territory.
If we factoring in this last option, the two tables will look like this.
I leave it to the reader to spot the differences and decide for themselves if they agree with them.
I will end with a list of relevant statements and articles, which where used in writing this article.
