Interesting piece. In the interest of brevity, pray allow me to focus on just Scenario 3. To wit:
Sure, Turkey may try to swallow Kurdistan, but it’ll be buying a whole lot of trouble. Turkey will face it’s own–dare I say it?–quagmire given that the Kurds will be united in their resistance and will, undoubtedly, mount a ferocious, and very effective, guerrilla campaign against any occupying force. I suspect every Turkish general who can read a map and knows his history already realizes an invasion of Kurdistan would be nothing short of insane. Indeed, even if the U.S. pulls out of Kurdistan, who’s to say we wouldn’t “accidentally” leave behind large quantities of AA, AT, and light artillery systems for the Peshmerga? Use of these alone would significantly slow down a Turkish invasion, if not stop it dead in its tracks.
A couple of other points: I don’t have precise figures handy, but the Turkish armed forces are heavily conscripted, which doesn’t augur well for keeping up either military or civilian morale for a lengthy guerrilla war. Furthermore, as we’ve learned repeatedly, wars of occupation are hideously expensive: an invasion of Kurdistan would undoubtedly raise havoc with the Turkish economy, especially in the tourism sector. All those Eurotrash tourists currently sunning themselves on Aegean and Black Sea beaches would disappear quicker than free chicken wings at a Friday night Happy Hour. And we should damn well count on the Kurds quickly opening a second front by attacking civilian and military targets within Turkey itself. If the Turks think they’ve got a terrorism problem now with the PKK, they haven’t seen anything yet. Once multiple car bombs start exploding in Ankara, Istanbul, and Izmir all bets will be off. In short, in my humble view, a Turkish invasion of Kurdistan would be a guaranteed recipe for political, economic, and military disaster…for the Turks.
