Spotlight: Turkish incursion into Iraq could open Pandora's box: analysts

As the tension mounts between Turkey and Iraq following Ankara's military buildup on its neighbor's border on the ground of national security, analysts have cautioned that a military intervention could have devastating consequences for the region.

"Such a military action may open Pandora's box with consequences difficult to predict," observed Yasar Yakis, the first foreign minister of Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party.

In response to the Turkish move, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said that a military intervention would lead to the disintegration of Turkey, adding Iraq is ready to fight if necessary.

Turkey is concerned that the involvement of Iraqi Shiite militia in the liberation of Mosul and Tal Afar from the Islamic State (IS) would lead to sectarian violence against Sunni Arabs and Turkmens in the two cities.

"Turkey should not see conducting a ground operation into Iraq as an option on the pretext of (protecting) Turkmens in Tal Afar or (fighting) the PKK in Sinjar, because this would serve to spark a sectarian war," warned Cahit Armagan Dilek, a security and foreign policy analyst.

The Iraqi army, backed by Kurdish groups, Iraqi Shiite militia called al-Hashd al-Shaabi and an air force coalition led by the United States, have been fighting to retake Mosul from the IS for nearly three weeks.

"I may only wish that Turkey's reaction to the developments regarding Tal Afar does not reach the level of a military intervention," said Yakis.

Turkey, which has emerged as a protector of Sunnis against rising Iranian influence in the region particularly since the so-called Arab Spring in 2011, has earlier declared Shiite militia's entry into central Mosul and Tal Afar as a redline.

In Dilek's opinion, al-Abadi's message is aimed at deterring Turkey from an incursion by giving the impression that Iraq has the backing of the U.S. and Iran.

The Turkish Armed Forces began deploying on Nov. 1 tanks and armored vehicles near the town of Silopi in Sirnak province on the Iraqi border. A second shipment of tanks was sent to Silopi by rail late Friday.

Turkey's demand for being part of the Mosul campaign against the IS was previously rejected by Iraq's Shiite-dominated government.

Earlier in the past week, Turkish Defense Minister Fikri Isik described the deployment of tanks on the border as a preparation in view of the important developments in the region.

Noting that Turkey needs to be prepared for all sorts of contingencies, Isik added, "Turkey has redlines. If those redlines are violated, Turkey will do what it must do."

Turkey does not want the Iraqi army's campaign to drive the IS from Mosul and Tal Afar to change the ethnic composition of the region, which is predominantly Sunni.

Isik said Turkey respects Iraq's territorial integrity, but would not tolerate a terrorist group getting a foothold in northern Iraq by being part of the anti-IS fight.

The minister's remarks are an obvious reference to the presence of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in Sinjar, a town near the Syrian border in northern Iraq.

The PKK, which has been conducting a bloody war against Turkey for more than 30 years to establish a Kurdish state in Turkey's predominantly Kurdish southeast, was part of the Kurdish forces that retook Sinjar from the IS a year ago.

Iraq may have been particularly irritated by Turkey's insistence on being militarily involved in the Mosul campaign, given Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's oft-repeated reference in recent weeks to Turkey's historical rights over the Mosul region.

"We did not voluntarily accept the borders of this state (of ours)," Erdogan said about two weeks ago as he criticized the Treaty of Lausanne, the newly founded Turkish Republic signed in 1923 with the Allied Powers of the First World War following a successful war of independence.

Erdogan stressed that Turkey does not have its eye on anybody's territory, but he also noted, as proof of Turkey's historical responsibility toward Iraq, that Mosul and Kirkuk used to belong to the Ottoman Empire, to which Turkey is the heir.

The National Oath the last Ottoman Parliament accepted in 1920, a time when Istanbul, the Ottoman capital, was under British occupation, included the province of Mosul as part of the Ottoman territory.

Ottoman's Mosul province included, other than the city of Mosul itself, cities such as Sinjar, Sulaymaniyah and oil-rich Kirkuk.

When the Ottoman Empire and the Allied Powers signed the Armistice of Mudros in 1918, Mosul was still under the control of the Ottoman army. But the British, being the superpower of the time, occupied the area after the conclusion of the armistice and refused to return it to Turkey during the Lausanne negotiations.

In yet another speech a week ago, Erdogan once again criticized those who negotiated the Treaty of Lausanne on behalf of the Turkish state for having failed, contrary to what the National Oath declared, to include Mosul within the Turkish territory.

Speaking vaguely of Turkey's political aims, he said Turkey would from now on resolutely fight to achieve its goals instead of acting faintheartedly as it did in the past.

Erdogan then added, "If we are destined to win, we will win like a man; if we are destined to die, we will die like a man. A middle-of-the-road (attitude) is no longer possible."

The remarks are indicative of outright irredentism, Sahin Mengu, a former deputy of Turkey's main opposition Republican People's Party, observed in his column published in the Aydinlik daily on Wednesday.

According to the analysts who talked to Xinhua, earlier Turkish discourse that Shiites should not be part of the Iraqi forces that will liberate IS-held areas does not make sense as most of the Iraqi army is composed of Shiites.

Additionally, a significant number of Shiite Turkmens are fighting in the ranks of al-Hashd al-Shaabi.

In the view of Dilek, a former staff officer in the Turkish Armed Forces, the Turkish government's discourse about Mosul and Tal Afar was mainly for show and aimed at appealing to the public at home.

It is only if the Shiite militia enters Tal Afar and starts massacring Turkmens, then the Turkish government would feel under pressure to intervene militarily, argued Dilek.

According to Dilek, such a scenario would not be appealing at all for Turkey as it would also mean confrontation with Shiite Turkmens.

"Because al-Hashd al-Shaabi is largely composed of Shiite Turkmens, such a clash would be seen as the Turkish army fighting the Turkmens," he explained.

The IS captured Mosul and Tal Afar, which are both situated in northern Iraq and not very far from the Turkish border, in June of 2014.

Tal Afar is currently populated mainly by Sunni Turkmens, as an estimated 150,000-200,000 Turkmens, a big majority of them estimated to be Shiites, fled the area following the IS occupation. Mosul is a dominantly Sunni Arab city.

It is widely believed that many of the Sunni Arab tribes in Mosul and some Sunni Turkmens in Tal Afar collaborated with the IS when it fought for the twin cities.

The Shiite militiamen were accused in the past of mistreating civilians in predominantly Sunni Arab cities like Fallujah and Ramadi, which they liberated from IS together with the Iraqi army.

If Shiite Turkmens in Tal Afar should decide to come back, it can not be considered as an attempt to alter the ethnic composition of the population, said Yakis.

He then added, "Turkey should rather focus its efforts to avoid a revenge operation by the returning Shiites and try to achieve this goal through persuasion rather than a military action."

Sectarian tension between Shiite and Sunni Arabs has developed in Iraq particularly in recent years, as many Sunnis began to feel they are not allowed to have a voice in the central government.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said days ago that the Turkish army's preparation is not aimed against Iraq's territorial integrity, but rather against potential threat to the Turkmen population in Tal Afar and against potential terrorist attacks by the PKK based in Sinjar.

Turkish media reports noted lately that al-Hashd al-Shaabi volunteers were getting near, despite Turkey's warnings, to IS-held Tal Afar.

There are signs, however, that Turkey's warnings are being heeded by Iraq and the U.S., Abdullah Agar, a security analyst who is a former member of the Turkish army's special forces, told CNNTurk on Thursday that the Iraqi prime minister said the same day that the Shiite volunteers did not need to enter Tal Afar.

Jeff Davis, spokesman of the U.S. Defense Department, was quoted on Wednesday by Turkey's state-run Anadolu Agency as saying that the U.S. would not provide military support to the Shiite militia in the anti-IS campaign.

The Hurriyet daily reported on Friday that Defence Minister Isik said Turkey was informed that the Iraqi forces who had managed to enter Mosul in the past days did not include the Shiite militia.

"The U.S. is now paying heed to our warnings," Isik was quoted as saying.

Both Yakis and Dilek warned that Turkey would be labelled as an occupying force violating international law, should it conduct a military incursion into Iraq.

The Turkish argument that the country would consider an intervention essentially out of humanitarian motivations looks far from convincing.

When the IS stormed Mosul and Tal Afar in 2014, Turkey did not do much to stop its killings. Ahmet Davutoglu, then Turkey's foreign minister, even described IS members as "angry boys" at the time.

Davutoglu's description of IS implied a sort of tacit approval as it suggested that the emergence of the IS was a result of the de-facto exclusion of Iraq's Sunnis from politics due to Shiite dominance.

Dilek thinks it likely that Turkey may, to please the public, conduct limited air strikes on terrorist targets in Sinjar and Tal Afar following negotiations with the U.S..

But Turkey should, instead of getting militarily involved, talk to Iran to stop the Shiite volunteers from engaging in a massacre against Sunnis in Tal Afar, he stressed. Endit