In fight against Islamic State, Turkey's Erdogan sees chance to battle Kurds
ISTANBUL, July 27 (Reuters) - Forced into battle against Islamic State as it presses on Turkey's borders, President Tayyip Erdogan is seizing the chance to keep another foe in check, bombing Kurdish militants he sees as a threat to the integrity of the Turkish state.
Casting the operations as a war on terrorist groups "without distinction", Turkey launched air strikes against Islamic State in Syria for the first time last week and granted the U.S.-led coalition access to its air bases after years of reluctance.
It also bombed camps in northern Iraq belonging to the militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) for the first time in at least three years. Hundreds of suspected Islamic State and PKK members have been rounded up in raids across Turkey.
Launching wars on two fronts is a high-risk strategy for the NATO member, leaving it dangerously exposed to the threat of reprisals by jihadists and at risk of reigniting a Kurdish insurgency that has cost 40,000 lives over three decades.
Turkey has been a conduit for foreign jihadists, with thousands thought to have crossed its borders to join Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, many concealed among the millions of tourists who flock to Turkey's shores each year.
They have often been aided by Turkish smugglers linked to the Islamist insurgents; a network Turkey has been trying to dismantle but which could retain capacity to launch attacks on Turkish soil after the fashion of last week's suicide bombing, blamed by Ankara on the militants, that killed 32 people.
Western diplomats have long feared that Istanbul, one of the world's most visited cities, or Turkey's Aegean or Mediterranean coastal resorts could be soft targets. Attacks that killed dozens of foreign tourists in Tunisia earlier this year served only as a reminder of the risks.
"Ankara's recent adoption of aggressive policies towards both the PKK and the Islamic State has considerably raised the risk of terrorist attacks and sustained civil unrest inside the country," Wolfango Piccoli of risk research firm Teneo Intelligence said in a note.
Yet on both fronts, Erdogan looks to be hoping to seize opportunity out of crisis. He is reviving Turkey's international standing with the more robust stance on Islamic State, but also undermining the pro-Kurdish opposition and bolstering nationalist support at home with the attacks on the PKK.
I'm so glad Turkey is finally joining the fight against ISIS (ISIL, IS, Daesh, whatever). The last year or so, others in the West (I suppose we sorta consider Turkey the West these days, rather than the Near East as was) have been fighting a potential existential threat to Turkey and the entire region south of Turkey's border, whilst Turkey let fighters, weapons, and money cross the border, seemingly with impunity.
And now, Turkey generously agrees to join in the fight, so long as they get to also bomb the Kurds, the only remotely stable or militarily proven ally we have on the ground, because they're so terrified of the possibility that 'their own' Kurds might not continue to be denied the statehood that the Turks have bloodily denied them for generations.
Our great ally in NATO, Turkey. Our would-be future member of the EU. The same Turkey that has been exploiting the economic frailty of neighbour and member of both the EU & NATO, Greece, by testing their sovereign airspace, to the point of inviting dogfights between the two countries' airforces.
The country that used to be the very model of secular western Islam, but is currently run by Islamist strongman Tayyip Erdoğan, he of Ak Saray-fame, who felt it necessary to squander vast quantities of the people's money on a massive new palatial complex for himself, one of the very largest in the world, on what was previously protected forest-land, so large in order presumably to be able to hold his incredible ego.
The West, in particular the Europeans, seem to have assumed that Turkey made the choice between the values of the liberal west, and the values of mediaeval Arabia long ago*. But clearly, that choice is still very much up in the air.
The UK, which, still within my lifetime, was facing the bloody aftermath of the Irish partition, just last year, allowed the people of Scotland, home of the UK's sole nuclear deterrent (and now sole shipbuilder -- Thanks DC !) and North Sea oil-fields, a peaceful democratic vote on independence. It's not surprising that such a similar opportunity would be inconceivable for the Kurds in Iran, in Iraq, in Syria. But then there's also western-allied NATO-member and future EU-candidate Turkey, which had seemingly made a sort of peace with the PKK, but can't wait to start bombing the Kurds again, the moment it gets the chance, even when they're key allies in a fight that threatens Turkey itself.
Here's Turkey's chance and Tayyip Erdoğan's to define themselves, and what they truly stand for. Hopefully they're aware of the significance of the moment, and, hopefully those fools in the EU are paying attention, either way.
* We made a similar assumption, multiple times as it happens, about Russia.
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