Turkey's Gift Horse

By ANDREW PURVIS

After much debate, Turkey's parliament voted last week to send some 10,000 troops to help keep the peace in Iraq. The news couldn't have been better timed for the Bush Administration, arriving just as it launched a campaign to convince Americans that Iraq isn't quite the mess it seems. The Turkish troops would be the third largest force (Britain is second) in Iraq and, as Muslims, lend sorely needed credibility to the occupation.

That, at least, is the theory. In reality, the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council is not happy about the deployment because of Iraq's history of bad blood with the Turks: Shi'a and Sunni Muslims resent the Turkish rule of the Ottoman Empire, and Iraq's Kurds are angry about Turkey's violent suppression of Kurdish separatism within Turkey's borders. Turkey, which is concerned that a move toward independence by Iraq's Kurds would inflame the aspirations of its Kurdish minority, previously threatened to block such a move by force if necessary. Indeed, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan sold the deployment to skeptical Turks by arguing that a presence in Iraq would enable Ankara to keep an eye on Kurdish mischief. And a Turkish minister tells TIME that during an emotionally charged closed session of parliament, Erdogan warned ministers, "The region is being shaped anew; we need to have a place at that table."

Turkish officials tell TIME that Ankara wants to station some troops between Baghdad and the northern Kurdish stronghold of Suleimaniyah, a move that would upset Iraqi Kurds. Aware of the risk of violence such a move would pose, U.S. commanders are pushing to deploy the Turks elsewhere, between Baghdad and the Syrian border to the west. A senior Turkish official says Ankara is considering opening a new border post closer to the Syrian border where the Turkomans--a minority friendly to Ankara's interests--are prevalent, and where, they hope, Turkish troops will be able to enter Iraq safely. Winning the vote, it seems, was the easy part. --By Andrew Purvis. With reporting by Simon Robinson

With reporting by Simon Robinson