Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Stratfor:

The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a Turkish Kurdish guerrilla group based in northern Iraq, struck Turkey on Sunday, killing 12 soldiers near a town about 20 miles inside of the Turkish border. The Turkish army responded by attacking the guerrillas and shelling suspected PKK bases inside of Iraq. This latest PKK attack comes just days after the Turkish parliament authorized the prime minister to insert Turkish troops into northern Iraq if he should choose to order it. The purpose of such an incursion would be to create a security buffer zone to keep the PKK out of Turkey.

Turkey occupied a similar buffer zone in the 1990s during Saddam Hussein’s reign in Iraq, but Ankara has not shown itself particularly eager to intrude again. Even after the fighting on Sunday, the Turks did not move across the border, instead calling on the United States to deal with the PKK — something the Americans would be hard pressed to do.

The attack raises an obvious question: Why is the PKK going out of its way to provoke a Turkish move into northern Iraq? At a time when Iraqi Kurds are closer than ever to having an autonomous (and perhaps internationally recognized) entity in northern Iraq — an entity with interesting possibilities for substantial oil revenue — the PKK seems to be doing everything it can to trigger a military incursion by the Turks. Certainly, if the PKK didn’t want Turkey to invade, this is not the way it would be behaving.

People tend to talk about the Kurds as a single national group — and, linguistically and religiously, they are. But history and current reality have divided them in ways that have generated serious differences in interest and ideology. The territory they occupy is divided among several countries, including Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria. And for most of the 20th century, Kurds in all of those states were equally oppressed.

However, starting in 1991 and accelerating after 2003, the Iraqi Kurds’ fate has diverged from that of the others. Represented in the Baghdad government, effectively autonomous in their region, protected by a special relationship with the United States, and increasingly prosperous through trade and important deals for developing oil in their region, the Iraq Kurds have become increasingly cautious and increasingly focused on their own interests rather than those of Kurds as a whole. The dream of united and independent Kurdistan isn’t gone by any means, but negotiating oil leases has become a more immediate concern.

From the PKK’s point of view, the increasingly insular focus of the Iraqi Kurds represents a betrayal of the Kurdish nation. Most Kurds live in Turkey. The Iraqi Kurds, rather than preparing for a confrontation with Turkey over Greater Kurdistan, are more interested in keeping the border peaceful so as to reassure investors. The PKK, a Turkish Kurdish group, does not gain anything from the prosperity of Iraqi Kurds. On the contrary, it faces the possibility that the first Kurdish region with substantial autonomy might focus on its own economic interest rather than on pan-Kurdish national goals.

While the Iraqi Kurds want to sign contracts, the PKK wants to wage war. It is in the PKK’s interest to do two things: disrupt the activities of the Iraqi Kurds as far as possible, and make sure that Iraqi Kurds view Turkey as a problem that must be solved before they can enjoy their prosperity. Nothing could suit the PKK’s interests better than having the Turks invade the Iraqi Kurdish region, no matter how shallow and limited that incursion might be. The PKK will do everything it can to draw the Turks further in, in hopes that the confrontation between Turkey and the PKK will become a confrontation between Turkey and the Iraqi Kurds — with, as a distant hope, the Americans intervening against the Turks.

That clearly is the intent of the PKK provocations at this point. The interesting question is, why haven’t the Iraqi Kurds acted against the PKK?

A great deal of this rift is ideological. It is one thing to oppose PKK actions. It is another thing to move toward civil war among the Kurds. Also, there is the threat that the PKK could turn its militant talents against the Iraqi Kurds, driving foreign investors and oil companies out of the region. The PKK is prepared to go the limit in a region where everyone else has an incentive to hold back. That gives it a distinct advantage.