Take for instance the recent spate of air strikes by Turkey on the Iraqi side of the border. They have been launched presumably on the assumption that the fatal shooting on July 17 of a Turkish consular employee and two local Iraqi Kurds in an Erbil restaurant was the handiwork of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
Never mind that the PKK has denied responsibility for what appears to be an isolated incident in Iraqi Kurdistan’s capital. Never mind too that the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) strongly condemned the killing, launched a massive manhunt for the shooter and, with impressive alacrity, arrested the suspected assailant and one accomplice.
But the Turks were looking for some quick Kurdish scalps anyway. Facing humiliation in the northwestern Syrian province of Idlib, where it has failed to stop Russia and the Syrian government from carrying out near-daily indiscriminate airstrikes, Ankara elected to go after the PKK, an armed group fighting for greater Kurdish cultural and political rights inside Turkey.
With the domestic economy in tatters, the opposition in control of the biggest cities and its NATO allies fuming over its purchase of the Russian S-400 missile defence system, the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan is, from now on, likely to be under pressure to play to its nationalist base at every opportunity.
But no matter how often his forces strike suspected PKK bases on Iraqi soil, Erdogan's domestic policy keeps adding insult to Turkish Kurds' injury. His government has kept dozens of pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) members and lawmakers locked up on flimsy terrorism charges. The party's two former co-chairs, Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag, have been in prison for the last several years.
Meanwhile, some Iraqi Kurds who had the “audacity” to unfurl a flag of Iraq’s Kurdistan Region while visiting Turkey’s Trabzon province were attacked by a group of locals and detained by authorities. The district public prosecutor went so far as to issue an arrest warrant for nine of the Iraqis and open an investigation.
The logic of both the ultra-nationalist Turkish mob and their government was probably something like this: When your country’s reputation as a responsible regional power and secular republic has already plumbed unprecedented depths, the demonization of a vulnerable ethnic minority can inflict only so much additional harm.
Still, the actions of the government as well as the residents of Trabzon prove that Ankara’s interest in cementing commercial ties with Erbil should not be mistaken for genuine goodwill. In other words, the KRG would be wise to continue walking a diplomatic tightrope while being conscious of the depth of Turkey’s antipathy towards the Kurdish people.
Just as Turkey renews its pounding of the PKK in the mountains of Iraq’s Kurdistan Region, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) too has upped the ante against its opponents, launching rockets and even drone strikes against Kurdish armed opposition groups along the shared border.
And if the latest shipping shenanigans of the IRGC navy are anything to go by, Iran has taken it for granted that post-Iraq invasion, the US and its Western allies do not have the stomach for another bruising fight.
To the extent that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his inner circle have not tried to make an ethnic minority a scapegoat for President Donald Trump’s “maximum pressure” policy, they deserve to be commended. Unlike Erdogan, who dare not challenge Russian President Vladimir Putin for his military’s participation in the Idlib air raids, Iran’s rulers have openly thrown down the gauntlet to their Western and Gulf adversaries.
Whether or not the US, UK, and Arab Gulf governments also deserve to be commended for their restraint in the face of Iran’s pirate operation in the Strait of Hormuz, it does seem Tehran’s intent is to bring pressure to bear on Washington to retreat from its hard line and, for good measure, lure those countries into a trap that leads automatically to a direct military confrontation.
The near daily harassment or capture of oil tankers by Iran, the sharp escalation in the rhetoric of the leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah, and the expressions of support from Iraq's pro-Iran politicians add up to a one-sided declaration of a low-intensity war. How long the other side will tolerate the provocations before the cost to political prestige (and the exchequer) becomes too high remains to be seen.
To be sure, confronting Iran is no easy matter: Tehran and its loyalists thrive on brinkmanship, political polarization, and conflict situations. They also have much less to lose in a war compared to their Gulf neighbours who take pride in their cosmopolitan cities, world-class infrastructure, and first-world living standards. What’s more, unlike its adversaries, Iran has a full menu of options to fight a war, namely through its proxies in Yemen, Iraq, and Lebanon.
Under the circumstance, the Arab Gulf states ought to do what the Kurds have long turned into an art form: to keep calm and carry on – in the hope that the pain of economic sanctions will eventually force the Iranian leadership to come to its senses. But it may take a long time before such a moment comes to pass, and Iran will probably double down on its strategy of hijacking tankers in the meantime.
For Kurds as well as Gulf Arabs, this is no doubt a testing time amid low oil prices, a weak Western appetite for military risk, and the dominance of strongmen and non-state actors. Holding one’s head up high is not easy when one’s enemy is armed to the teeth and raring for a fight. Nevertheless, if an explosion of the Middle East powder kegs is to be averted, pragmatism and patience must necessarily take priority over national pride for the region’s more rational actors.
 | Arnab Neil Sengupta is an independent journalist and commentator on the Middle East. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rudaw. |
