Turkey’s dramatic shift toward Iraqi Kurdistan: Politics before peace pipelines
In the summer of 2003, NATO’s two largest militaries nearly came to blows in northern Iraq. On July 4 in the city of Sulaymaniyah, soldiers of the U.S.’ 173rd Airborne Brigade apprehended, handcuffed and placed hoods on the heads of a group of Turkish special forces troops who were operating out of uniform. Turkey’s government and society were outraged, claiming their U.S. ally had humiliated them by treating some of their most elite soldiers as terrorists. U.S. military leaders felt fully justified in arresting soldiers whom they believed were preparing to assassinate an Iraqi Kurdish official. An intense downward spiral in U.S.-Turkey relations followed in 2004 with the publication of the xenophobic novel “Metal Storm,” which depicts a Turkish nuclear strike on Washington in response to a U.S. military attack to divide Turkey between Greece and Armenia.
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