A New Quagmire: Can One NATO Member War Against Another?

This blog has not been known for its patience with the Turkish government or military. But the restraint exercised by the Erdogan/Gul regime with respect to Iraqi Kurdistan is both necessary and telling.

To catch you up: Over the weekend, the Kurdish PKK, a Stalinoid terrorist group, ambushed and killed at least 12 Turkish soldiers on Turkish soil, under circumstances that remain unclear, then fled to northern Iraq. In addition, eight more Turkish soldiers are listed as missing, which means they're likely prisoners of the PKK, if they haven’t been killed already, too.

Turkey is demanding that the U.S. and Iraq do everything in its joint power to bring the PKK to heel, although Iraq’s President Jalal Talabani argues that it's almost impossible for any army to find guerrillas who hide in the mountains of Dohuk. And he would know, being a Kurd himself. Moreover, he says, Iraq is not prepared to hand over to Ankara any Kurds it might eventually arrest because – though he doesn't put it like this – Turkey treats its own Kurdish minority miserably.

Are you feeling deja vu? Should you expect a calamitous showdown between two neighboring states that begs comparison to the IDF-Hezbollah war from two summers ago? No, I don't think so. Here’s why.

As Iraq's Defense Minister Abd al-Qadir al-Ubaidi put it to a closed session of Parliament today, the Multi-National Forces-Iraq are still solely responsible for Iraq's security. Only they can dispatch soldiers to the north to strengthen the border against a foreign invasion, and only they can perform search-and-capture missions to bring outlaw guerrillas to justice. Well, guess who still controls MFN-I? We do. The chances that the U.S. would divert resources away from Baghdad and Anbar right now to go after a handful of non-Islamist militants who don’t threaten Iraq’s domestic stability, are, quite frankly, slim and none. We can't afford to jeopardize the success of the surge, which relies on manpower, nor can we countenance a massive, state-backed foreign invasion of Iraq, especially when infiltration by Iran and Syria poses a greater threat to the country than Al Qaeda does. (Talk at the Pentagon now centers on whether or not to come right out and declare "victory" against Al Qaeda. It’s not that doing so would be premature, only hubristic. That's how successfully the Bin Ladenists have been routed in Iraq.)

Now, two NATO members have never gone to war with each other and they never will, not unless the entire charter is to be ripped up. Whatever you think of the late failures of multilateralism, consider that the implosion of NATO would be the greatest crisis to befall a military alliance since Adolf Hitler reneged on his friendship pact with Josef Stalin. A U.S.-Turkey skirmish would cause untold devastation in Afghanistan, which is now guarded chiefly by NATO forces (can you imagine soldiers from two belligerent nations fighting side-by-side in another part of the globe?)

There’s good motive, in other words, behind Turkey’s climb-down in bellicose rhetoric:

Turkey has worked hard to avoid military action, said a Western official, because it knows that an offensive would damage relations with the United States as well as Turkey’s bid to join the European Union, a goal Mr. Erdogan’s government has aggressively pressed.

“We don’t want to go into northern Iraq — it’s a mess,” said Suat Kiniklioglu, a lawmaker from Mr. Erdogan’s party and a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee. “We are a country negotiating with the European Union.”

But the Sunday ambush on Turkish troops was carried out by a much larger force than the P.K.K. typically uses, the Western official said, and appeared aimed at drawing Turkey into conflict.

“I think we’ve passed the threshold,” Mr. Kiniklioglu said. “It looks like for two days or three days there will be a holding off and a waiting period. Unless the U.S. comes up with something magic in the next few days, which is highly unlikely, we’ll probably go in.”

Turkey’s defense minister, Vecdi Gonul, speaking to reporters in Kiev, Ukraine, after talks with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, played down plans for swift military action against the Kurdish militants. “We have plans to cross the border, however, not immediately,” Turkey’s Anatolian agency quoted Mr. Gonul as saying.

Something tells me that the Kurdistan Regional Government already knows the fate of the 8 missing Turkish soldiers. Something also tells me that they’re now sharing that knowledge with Baghdad and Washington. The “waiting period” is euphemism for damage control. Whatever the case, it would require a stunning collapse of diplomacy – and probably an attempted coup against the Ankara regime – for Turkish tanks to cross the border into Iraq.