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Turkey Before the Gates Of Hell in KurdistanBy YOUSSEF IBRAHIM Welcome to the latest regional war in the Middle East — Turkey's contemplated invasion of northern Iraq. Among other things, this latest Turkish aggression, preceded years ago by the invasion of Cyprus, threatens to: 
• Send energy prices through the roof. With oil prices already at a record $90 a barrel, they will easily keep setting new highs as winter arrives in Europe and America. • Set back American military and political efforts to stabilize an already convulsed Middle East, inviting even more meddling by Iran and Syria. • Bring doom upon the Turkish invaders, who failed for more than 30 years to subjugate their Kurdish minority of 7 million, or 10% of Turkey's population. Now they would expand the fight to all 25 million Kurds, who share the mountainous border areas of Iraq, Iran, and Syria. These well-armed Kurds live in a contiguous area the size of Germany and Britain combined. The distance separating a military skirmish by a pompous Turkish army and the emancipation of what in effect is the largest minority in the Middle East united by language, culture, and militias is deceptively short. Targeted "Kurdistan" is no picnic. It is the size of Austria, economically prosperous, and endowed with huge oil resources. It has thrived as a Western-protected haven since the Gulf War of 1991 and functions as territory where America maintains extensive strategic bases of intelligence gathering and army operations. Even more important, those Kurds are America's only true friends and allies inside Iraq. Decades of aggression by both the Turkish and Iraqi armies over the past 30 years, destroying 10,000 Kurdish villages, have failed to extinguish the Kurds' quest for identity. Saddam Hussein went so far as to rain chemical and biological weapons on innocent civilians in Kurdish villages. Yet they remain, stronger than ever. Today Turkey's real goals are what they have been for decades — Iraq's northern oil. The region is already exporting some 750,000 barrels a day via a pipeline to the Turkish port of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean Sea. Before the American invasion, it exported nearly 1.5 million barrels daily, and there is a lot more from where this comes. Turkey wants to own it instead of merely transporting it. This would not be the first Turkish grab for hegemony in the Middle East. Turkish troops invaded Cyprus on July 15, 1974, using the pretext of defending the Turkish minority of the island against its Greek majority. They are still occupying an independent pro-Western democracy. Indeed, the Turkish beachhead on Cyprus has been the main reason the European Union has been dragging its heels on Turkish membership. The impending invasion of Iraq will close that door permanently. Even as a NATO member, Turkey has done little except to subvert Western strategies, including its flat rejection of access for American and British troops into Iraq prior to the invasion in 2003. What would happen should Israel be subjected to a Syrian-Iranian attack and should America ask our Islamist Turkish allies for permission to use their territory to help? When a few weeks ago Congress proposed a resolution to commemorate the genocide by Turks that, starting in 1915, massacred 1.5 million Armenian Christians, the government of Prime Minister Erdogan threatened to halt shipments of fuel and materiel to American troops in Iraq. After the end of World War I, in the Treaty of Sevre of 1920, the major powers promised Kurds their own nation in the Middle East as part of the spoils from the defeated Ottoman Empire. Predictably, Turkey, Syria, and Iran, along with most Arab countries of the region, balked at the suggestion of founding a non-Arab state. Yet for centuries the Kurds endured, united by language, tradition, culture, fighting ethos, and strong militias. Above all they have a dream, one that a wayward Turkish incursion in Iraq may finally bring about — an independent Kurdish state. America should support the creation of such a state, as it sorely needs countries it can claim as friends in that region. ymibrahim@gmail.com Reader comments on this article
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