Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Who Lost Turkey?

Philip H. Gordon and Omer Taspinar of the Brookings Institution believe Turkey is the brink of becoming anti-American, because of Iraq:
The United States and Europe should be paying close attention to what is going on in Turkey today. Turkey's relationship with the United States is under great strain. Turks deeply resent the effect that the war in Iraq has had on their own Kurdish separatism problem. Turkey's long-standing fear that independence-minded Kurdish nationalists would dominate northern Iraq, thereby setting a dangerous precedent for Kurds in Turkey, has since become reality. The Kurdish population of Turkey is about 15 million, 3 to 4 times more than Iraq's Kurdish minority. Despite U.S. government protestations to the contrary, most Turks believe that a civil war in Iraq will be followed by the creation of a de facto if not de jure independent Kurdistan. In that sense, the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the ensuing disorder in the country threaten 50 years of U.S.-Turkish strategic partnership.