Ankara’s responses to these problems, however, have been less than tactful. There is a lot of talk about a possible military intervention in Northern Iraq and last week’s prospecting crisis spread rumors that Turkey had sent warships to Cyprus. In response to these moves, the President of the Kurdish Autonomous Region, Masoud Barzani, warned Turkey that they would not sit idly in case of a Turkish intervention in their territory and the spokesman of the Greek Cypriot administration Christodoulos Pashiardis charged Turkey for behaving like a “pirate.”

How should Turkey behave in these circumstances? First of all, military intervention should always be the last resort in a country’s foreign policy. War is a continuation of politics by other means, not the other way around. Moreover, a military strike either against Greek Cyprus or the Kurdish regional government in Northern Iraq would not solve Turkey’s problem. The only use that these moves would have would be to depict Turkey as a bully and that image will only result in an international backlash.

In the same light, a military intervention in either place may not yield a clear-cut success. Even if we are to assume that the international community would not throw its weight behind the Greek Cypriots and the Iraqi Kurds, these people are not going to sit there and watch the Turks come. The least they will do is to retaliate in kind. And that will not be nice.

On that note, it is apt to recall a moment back in 1964: When the Turkish military did not have the capabilities to carry out a military operation in Cyprus, then-Prime Minister İsmet İnönü, the hero of the War of Independence, reportedly said that “this nation can accept everything, but it can never accept defeat.” Using the Johnson letter as a façade, İnönü did not move and saved the Turkish military from the embarrassment of storming the beaches of the island with civilian cruise ships.

In response to the Greek Cypriot provocation, then, a well-orchestrated action would not be too hard to stage. It would be a great move to send a few prospecting ships to the Eastern Mediterranean, especially to the region that is in the contiguous zone between Turkey and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, which the Greek Cypriots also claim as theirs. Refraining from firing the first bullet is always a good idea.

As for Northern Iraq, Turkey needs to come to grips with the fact that there is a distinctly Kurdish political entity in its southeastern border. What Turkey also has to understand is that it is not the major problem for the Kurds of Northern Iraq. It was under the Baath party’s brutal Arabization program that Kurdish people in Iraq suffered and that is the reason why they are so assertive for autonomy. More importantly, they know that they can never demand territory from Turkey, an exploit that would only bring them ruin. (Plus, numbers speak for themselves; a semi-feudal region of 5.5 million does not stand a chance against a capitalist country of 70 million.)

The idea of thinking strategically would entail a cool-headed approach. As much as it sounds like an unconventional source, it would be quite to the point to quote the Godfather series: “None of this is personal, it’s strictly business.” If Turkey wants to gain more by spending less, all it has to do is to act more rationally in dealing with its foreign policy questions.

4 February 2007

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Barın Kayaoğlu is a Ph.D. student in history at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia and a regular contributor to the Journal of Turkish Weekly.

E-mail: kayaoglu@virginia.edu

http:www.usak.org.uk