Turkey and the PKK

Plan to help Turkey hit Kurds shows Bush hasn't learned

My initial reaction to this article is to agree that us being actively involved in helping Turkey deal with Kurdish incursions into its territory (real or imagined) is a bad idea. The bigger question in my mind is why we are even involved with Turkey at all. The Cold War is over and even if Russia becomes a problem for the world again, Turkey will not likely play any vital role for us in any way.

They are a "moderate" Muslim country with a secular tradition of democracy and one of the few Muslim countries to recognize Israel. But every time they have an election, the people seem to pick religion-based, anti-American parties. It happened again earlier this month. The army then has to step in to restore "democracy" by removing any elected officials who don't tow the military line. This is obviously not a true democracy and if it ever becomes one it will likely be staunchly anti-American.

And beyond those few redeeming factors, what is the point of us getting any more deeply involved in their historic problems - especially in taking their side against one of our few success stories in Iraq - the Kurds? What good is a relationship with Turkey for us? Is I recall they were nothing but an obstacle to our invasion of Iraq. I disagreed with the invasion myself, but what good is an ally if they refuse to help us in an area where they can offer some of the best assistance?

Let's take a look from another angle though. Let's assume they are giving us something really valuable as our ally that is hidden from public view. Do we really want to make a deal with the Devil? Turkey, like Japan, has trouble coming to terms with admitting its own crimes against humanity. The Armenian genocide comes to mind here. It is, I believe, still officially banned from text books and has lead to more than a few deaths and death threats against public officials who say Turkey should admit to its role in the killings. We can also look to the "ethnic cleansing" of Greeks from mainland Turkey after WW I as well as from northern Cypress, not to mention the invasion of northern Cypress to supposedly protect the minority Turks.

Interestingly, while Turkey has no problem carving out a separate ethnic enclave for Turks out of a sovereign nation, they do have trouble with their own minority populations carving out a sovereign state for themselves. In this case the primary minorities being the Kurds in the southeast and Armenians in the northeast. Turkey has done a fairly good job of colonizing these areas with Turks to try and defeat any claims for ethnic autonomy, but this is just as a phony as it sounds.

My final question though is why we still have this strong relationship or feel this need to cater to Turkey. Is it solely because of their status as a secular Islamic nation and their help with Israel or perhaps against Iran? If that is the solely case, we should really reconsider what benefit this really is. My other thought is that we are constantly hearing that our support in Israel has more to do with us having such a large and influential Jewish population and pro-Israel lobbies in this country. I imagine there is some truth to this, but if it is true or least true to some extent, then why haven't we abandoned Turkey yet? We have substantial and wealthy populations of Armenian and Greek immigrants in this country and the subject of Turkey is one on which they all have a very negative opinion. That is compared to perhaps a handful of Turks.