Last month I was in Turkey and learned how seriously the Turks regard the PKK (Kurdish Workers Party) terrorist threat in that country's Kurdish region. Attacks on Turks by the PKK--and suspicions that they are coming from the adjacent Kurdish region of Northern Iraq--are major news stories in Turkey, while they are only beginning to be noticed in the United States. The PKK insurgents may or may not be allied with al Qaeda, but they definitely are ruthless terrorists. They also are NOT supported by the political groups that currently predominate in Kurdish sections of Iraq, according to Iraqi officials. But some Turks suspect otherwise, and , in any event, have every reason to be alarmed about the terrorism to which their country has been subjected.
Periodically the Turkish military expresses a desire to pursue the PKK into Iraq. War exercises are held near the border and it would not be hard at all to see an incursion take place. A number of Americans--from Secretary of State Rice to former Secretary of State Kissinger--have urged restraint on Turkey, but tensions remain high.
A new story has some Kurds announcing that the Turks have massed 140,000 troops on the Iraq border. (See e.g. this ABCNews.com story.) The U.S. seems to regard that as propaganda. Nonetheless, no one should treat the danger lightly. Ilan Berman, vice president for policy at the American Foreign Policy Council, has a useful idea for using technology to intercept PKK terrorists on the Turkish/Iraqi border, and he suggests that we make it available to the Turks as a way to show our commitment to help them in all reasonable ways. (See "Kurdistan Showdown" in today's Wall Street Journal.)
The current government of Turkey, though nominally "Islamic", actually is the more pro-Western of the two major political parties and the least interested in invading Iraq. The Turkish military, however, is aligned with more secularist groups and more open to the idea of a war to crush the PKK, even though such a conflict likely would pull into it the Kurds who presently are not supportive of the PKK. It also would do terrible damage to Iraq as a whole.
The fact that the pro-secularism Turkish military presently is restrained by the nominally Islamic elected government will seem counter-intuitive to many Western observers, though most in close contact with Turkey have recognized the reality. The "religious" element in the Turkish parliament actually, on balance, is relatively more favorable toward tolerance for Christians and other religious minorities. (See my blog on that subject here.) It seems likely that elections in coming months will only confirm the present political arrangement in Turkey.
However, if Democrats, and media and some Republicans have their way and the United States decides to pull out of Iraq after September, the already pronounced likelihood of a substantial rise in regional conflict will be increased in the semi-independent section of Iraq that, with some notable exceptions, has been the safest part of the country. In other words, you may expect to see the Iraq war go international, with our allies the Kurds, thrust into a war with our allies, the Turks. It is hard to imagine worse folly.
Please ask your local "peace" activist who favors American withdrawal from Iraq this year what he or she will advocate when our allies in the Middle East wind up fighting each other--and each demands our help.