[MOSUL AND] IRAQ’S NEXT WAR
By Daniel Pipes
Source: Article submitted by the author, an IHC Featured Writer
IHC staff,
Published 11 November 2007
About 100,000 Turkish troops, backed by aircraft and tanks, are
poised to enter Iraq for counterterrorism purposes. But once there,
they might just stay permanently, occupying the Mosul area, leading
to dangerous regional consequences.
To understand this danger requires a refresher in Turkish irredentist
ambitions harking back to the 1920s. The Ottoman Empire emerged
from World War I on the losing side, a predicament codified in 1920
by the Treaty of S?vres imposed on it by the victorious Allies. The
treaty placed some Ottoman territory under international control and
much of the rest under separate Armenian, French, Greek, Italian,
and Kurdish control, leaving Turkish rule to continue only in a
northwest Anatolian statelet.
With Kemal Atat?rk’s military victories of 1919-22 and the reassertion
of Turkish power, however, S?vres was never applied. Instead,
the Treaty of Lausanne, signed in 1923, established all of Turkey’s
present borders but for the one with British-occupied Iraq. For Iraq,
Lausanne stipulated a provisional boundary (the "Brussels line")
to be replaced within nine months by a "friendly arrangement to be
concluded between Turkey and Great Britain." Failing an agreement,
the League of Nations would decide the border.
In fact, Ankara and London did not reach a "friendly arrangement"
and the League of Nations ended up assigning Mosul province, with
its 600,000 inhabitants, to Iraq. The Atat?rk government reluctantly
signed a treaty in 1926 based on the Brussels line.
For nearly six decades, Mosul’s disposition seemed settled. But it
re-emerged as an issue during the Iraq-Iran War of 1980-88, when
Saddam Hussein lost full control over northern Iraq. Four times
after 1983, he permitted Turkish troops the right of "hot pursuit"
onto Iraq territory to hunt down a mutual enemy, the Kurdish Workers’
Party (Partiya Karkerana Kurdistan, or PKK). These incursions inspired
some elements in Turkey to revive the old claims to Mosul.
The Kuwait War of 1991 led to a further collapse in Iraqi authority
north of the 36th parallel, prompting Turkish forces to engage
in hot pursuit across the border 29 times, feeding Ankara’s Mosul
ambitions. These aspirations culminated in 1995, when approximately
35,000 Turkish troops entered northern Iraq in "Operation Steel,"
leading Turkey’s President S?leyman Demirel explicitly to re-open
the 1926 file: "The border is wrong," he said.
"The Mosul Province was within the Ottoman Empire’s territory. Had that
place been a part of Turkey, none of the problems we are confronted
with at the present time would have existed." Demirel even accused
the Western powers of resurrecting the long-defunct Treaty of S?vres.
Demirel’s comments roused immediately, strong, and negative reactions,
and he backtracked, saying that "Turkey does not plan to use force to
either solve the [border] problem or gain territory." But, as I wrote
at the time, "nothing was actually resolved and the Mosul issue could
flare up into a crisis, especially if the Iraqi government continues
to weaken."
Which brings us to the current situation. Much has changed since
1995, with Saddam Hussein deposed, the PKK leader in a Turkish jail,
Islamists ruling in Ankara, and northern Iraq a flawed haven of
tranquility. But the PKK again roils Turkish-Iraqi relations, Turkish
forces routinely cross into Iraq, and the Mosul question looms anew.
In March 2003, Ankara’s then-new Islamist government decided against
helping the U.S.-led war effort to overthrow Saddam Hussein, a decision
that forfeited Turkish influence over northern Iraq. Despite the
presence of several Turkish battalions quasi-permanently stationed in
Iraq, a rejuvenated PKK began cross-border attacks in Turkey in 2004,
eventually killing thousands. In July 2006, Turkey’s Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdo?an announced his government was "running out of
patience" and Turkish forces repeatedly struck at PKK targets.
The issue reached new heights of tension in recent weeks, despite an
Ankara-Baghdad agreement requiring that Iraqi troops crack down on the
PKK and unconfirmed reports of a U.S. Special Forces covert operation
against the PKK. With Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s support,
Erdo?an has waved away American concerns about a Turkish invasion,
the Turkish parliament voted 507-19 to authorize air strikes and
ground invasions of Iraq, and Chief of Staff Ya?ar B?y?kan?t made
bellicose threats.
The Turks have entirely valid counterterrorist reasons to strike
the PKK in Iraq, but Ankara’s shadowy irredentism since the 1990s
suggests that it harbors aspirations to regain some Ottoman real
estate. In other words, yet another unsettled Middle Eastern border
threatens instability.