Turkey weighs role in an Iraq war

Everyone here remembers the columns of refugees that poured into this hardscrabble corner of southeastern Turkey at the end of the Gulf War almost 12 years ago.

Now, they're worrying about the columns of trucks carrying tanks that rumbled through this border town a week ago, headed for Iraq. And they're wondering what the next US-led war against Baghdad will bring.

Washington, too, is wondering. Turkey has promised that it will tell the US by Friday what level of cooperation it intends to offer the US, which has asked to use Turkey as a launch pad for an attack on northern Iraq. The use of bases here and in south-central Turkey would allow the Pentagon to unleash a two-front war to squeeze Saddam Hussein's regime from north and south.

In short, everyone here is talking savas - war - and some are preparing for the worst.

Here in the southeast, a predominantly Kurdish region that was embroiled in separatist warfare with the Turkish military until about three years ago, many residents are sealing homes with plastic in case of a retaliatory chemical attack by Mr. Hussein. Others are focused on what analysts say is more-likely fallout: economic damage to a country that counts Baghdad as an important trading partner - and the political spillover of nascent Kurdish power in a postwar Iraq.

The latter prospect comes at a time when Turkey's domestic Kurdish issue seemed on a road to reconciliation - and is a key reason why Turkey has cause to hesitate over US war plans.

"We have seen hundreds of trucks and thousands of troops coming through here. Over the last 15 days, they've been coming, especially in the evening and nights, and then passing through to Iraq," says Ayup Tanis, the leader of DEHAP, a left-wing Kurdish political party. "We are against this war because many Arab and Kurdish people may die for something we think could be solved through diplomatic methods."

Washington's plans for "regime change" in Iraq, which look increasingly likely to entail an invasion early next year, are not being received in Turkey with the enthusiasm the Bush administration would like. With that in mind,one Pentagon scenario suggests US soldiers would be flown into southern Turkish bases and put on helicopters for northern Iraq, to prevent the need for an expanded number US troops based in Turkey. In contrast, major Turkish papers this week suggested the Pentagon was asking permission for the deployment of as many as 80,000 US soldiers close to the Iraqi border for five years.

Foremost among Turkey's concerns is that a war against Hussein could lead to an independent Kurdistan in northern Iraq, an area that has been enjoying a semi-autonomous existence since the enforcement of the no-fly zones after the 1991 Gulf War. That, in turn, might encourage Turkey's own Kurdish population - between 12 and 20 million of Turkey's 68 million citizens - to revive the separatist movements.

"Their perspective on Iraq is all about the Kurdish threat," a Western diplomat in Ankara says of Turkey. "They believe that whatever the Kurds in northern Iraq get, the Kurds in Turkey will agitate for."

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