Turkey prepares to ignore an agreement it signed just two weeks ago that explicitly rules out Turkish military operations inside Iraq.

Dick Gephardt and Bob Livingston take Turkish money to argue that Ottoman Turks didn’t commit genocide against 1.5 million Armenians in 1915.

Turkish officials mutter about “what the US will lose” in Iraq if it crosses them.

What is going on here?

The answer might be found by looking at the abrupt and unexplained resignation this Tuesday of the retired US general Joseph Ralston, who had been the special US envoy to Turkey on the question of the Kurdistan Worker’s Party, or PKK.

The PKK is the most extreme Kurdish militant group anywhere. Founded in 1983, its structure, funding and methods resemble Lebanon’s Hezbollah. The PKK sells drugs and black-market goods in Europe to fund its activities, which are aimed at getting Turkey to create equal conditions for its Kurds.

Until 1991, Turkish Kurds were not allowed their own language, clothes, music or newspapers.

The PKK’s methods include identifying Turkish “collaborators” and either ostracizing or killing them, tactics that have not endeared them to their fellow Kurds.

This lack of support has driven many PKK into the mountainous redoubts of northern Iraq, where they sometimes launch operations back across the border against Turkish soldiers. The PKK also has bases in the more populated and accessible Erbil and Sulaimaniyah.

Turkey itches to crush the PKK insurgents in Iraq but the American occupation hinders the full-scale military effort required to do so. And Turkey’s long hoped-for and long-delayed accession to the EU would be put in jeopardy by such a move.

Then there’s the question of whether an invasion would inspire sympathy for the PKK among moderate Kurds in both Turkey and Iraq, who to this point have mixed feelings about them at best.

US general Joseph Ralston, former supreme NATO commander for Europe, was appointed in Sept. 2006 to help Turkey neutralize the PKK.

No apparent progress against the PKK was made during his tenure. A Kurdish refugee camp in northern Iraq said to harbor PKK members was raided in Jan. 2007, but “not one bullet” was found.

However, weeks after Ralston’s appointment, Turkey bought 30 new F-16 fighter aircraft from Lockheed Martin.

Ralston sits on the board of directors of Lockheed Martin. He also is vice-chairman of the Cohen Group, which has lobbied on behalf of Lockheed Martin since 2004.

Ralston’s Turkish counterpart, the retired general Edip Başer, was fired in May after complaining about the lack of success in their efforts. Ralston apparently conversed with Başer’s successor — career diplomat Rafet Akgünay — only once, to congratulate him on his new job.

A little more than two weeks ago, Turkey and Iraq signed a joint agreement of cooperation in squeezing the PKK’s funding and supply structures, while explicitly ruling out Turkish military action inside Iraq’s borders.

Ralston was not involved.

The current supreme commander of NATO forces in Europe, general John Craddock, says he is unaware of any plans to replace Ralston.

The question of whether in Ralston’s absence the US has any alternative plans to aid Turkey in its ongoing battles against the PKK remains unanswered.

Turkey’s announcement of its intention to invade northern Iraq may be designed to provoke an American answer sooner rather than later.

It may also be intended to threaten US lawmakers into defeating a resolution that would officially recognise the killing of up to 1.5 million Armenians in 1915 as a “genocide”.

The threat could be persuasive. A Turkish incursion of any scale into Kurdish territory would massively complicate US military strategy in northern Iraq. It runs the risk of alienating Iraqi Kurds, who have had no great love for the PKK but could move closer to them in response to an attack.

Iraqi Kurds have easily been America’s most reliable allies for the duration of the US occupation, and northern Iraq — even with a PKK presence — is a stable haven compared with the rest of the country.

President Bush argued against the genocide resolution yesterday on these grounds.

But despite its talk of a big invasion, Turkey’s hands may be tied by its aspiration to join the European Union.

Turkey sometimes speaks of EU membership as the equivalent of discovering oil: a massive windfall that stands to benefit everyone — including the Kurds. The country’s leadership estimates that Kurds would settle for being “Turkish” if that meant more money in their pockets.

Without the economic benefits of EU membership, and without any serious effort by Turkish leadership to redress the decades of repression and violence against the Kurds, it’s hard to see the PKK — and the grievances that birthed the PKK — going away.

Sedat Laçiner, director of the International Strategic Research Organization and a prominent Turkish intellectual, said Tuesday that in any case, armed attacks against the PKK won’t work.

“Killing more terrorists apparently does not resolve the problem.”

“Nearly 25,000 terrorists have been killed since the PKK launched its bloody campaign in the 1980s,” he said. “If today we are still where we started at, we have to revise our strategy.”

All the while, Turkish Kurds look across the border at the autonomous Kurdish zone established in northern Iraq and wonder why they can’t have the same thing. In their case, the grass really is greener on the other side.

• Turkish Daily News: And Ralston quits, officially
• Journal of Turkish Weekly: Turkey vows determined fight against terror
• New Republic: K Street Cashes in on the 1915 Armenian Genocide (July 2007)
• Harper’s: Lost in the Valley of the Wolves (Nov. 2006)

Turkey is preparing to invade Kurdish-controlled territory in northern Iraq — against American wishes.

Turkish troops are already shelling Kurdish positions across the border. The executive branch will submit a request to parliament some time this week for a larger ground invasion.

Turkey says it is targeting separatists allied to the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK). The two sides have exchanged more than two dozen casualties each in border skirmishes over the past several weeks.

They have fought each other since 1984, mainly inside Turkey. The fighting has resulted in more than 40,000 deaths and about two million Kurdish refugees in Iraq, Iran, Syria and Lebanon.

The United States and Turkey both say the PKK are terrorists. The PKK says it is an army fighting a war against Turkey.

Ground strike

Any Turkish ground strike on the few PKK bases in Iraq would have to pass through several Iraqi cities and over several mountains. But despite a joint security agreement aimed at squeezing the PKK’s funding and resources, Iraqi negotiators have stopped short of letting Turkey inside its borders.

The US has urged Turkey to continue to act in concert with the Iraqi government but Turkey is not in a mood to listen. For months the US has promised Turkey that it would keep a lid on PKK activity in the north, with little effect.

Genocide

The US congress, meanwhile, is on the verge of passing a resolution declaring that the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Armenians at the hands of Ottoman Turks during World War I was a genocide. Turkey has lobbied hard to defeat it.

The roots of Kurdish resistance to Turkish rule grow from decades of ethnic and economic repression. Until 1991, Kurdish music, language, fashion and newspapers were all banned in Turkey.

The PKK’s demands include a further easing of language restrictions, an amnesty for PKK fighters and the right of PKK leaders to be exiled in Europe.

Since 1980, the US has sold or given Turkey, a NATO ally, more than $15 billion of weaponry.

• Rastî: Mulling the Invasion
• Kevin McKiernan: Good Kurds, Bad Kurds (documentary feature)
• Australian Broadcasting Corporation: Turkey considers retaliation raid on Iraq
• Turkish Daily News: Former chief of staff reveals thoughts on turbulent period