Turkey and Iran drawn into crisis in Iraq

For the countries closest to Iraq’s turbulent north this has been a momentous week.

Turkey, Iran and Syria now have to cope with the two rising actors whose influence and activities spill across borders: the extremists of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (known as Isis) and the Kurds of northern Iraq and beyond.

For all the alarm at Isis’s onslaught – which included the seizure of Mosul, Iraq’s second city, and the capture of 80 Turkish hostages – the advances of the Kurds, who this week occupied the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, may be at least as consequential.

The growing threat of Isis is prompting some of the region’s powers to set aside their differences. Yet the potential fragmentation of Iraq threatens to unleash new turmoil in the region.

In Iran, there are hopes the crisis will show that Tehran is an essential partner in a broader struggle against al-Qaeda associated groups. “Only Iran and the [Revolutionary] Guards can demolish Isis through its own forces or [its allies in Lebanon’s] Hizbollah,” said one regime insider, who claimed that even the US “needs Iran to prevent the spread of violence in the region”.

But it is not clear that any common front against Isis would be sustainable. There is still debate about the cause of last week’s events.

Some commentators see the fall of Mosul and the Kurds’ consolidation of territory as the result of Baghdad’s mismanagement and sectarianism, as well as the spillover of the war in neighbouring Syria. But they also point, more generally, towards tensions across the wider Middle East.

A region-wide conflict has pitted Sunnis against Shia. Its battlegrounds have been the weak and fractured states of Syria and Iraq; its chess pieces, extremist fighters.

“This is not a sustainable approach because it unleashes forces no one can control,” says Brian Katulis at the Centre for American Progress, a think-tank. “We have seen a surge in Salafi jihadism.”

Turkey has long been criticised for failing to control jihadist fighters crossing its territory to battle its enemy Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president.

Over the past year, as Isis has established a presence on the Syrian side of the border, Ankara has become increasingly alarmed and carried out dozens of unpublicised operations against al-Qaeda aligned militants within its own borders.

Tensions between Turkey and Isis – which is holding 80 Turks hostage in Iraq – have run particularly high since the militant group threatened in March to over-run the tomb of Suleyman Shah, a Turkish-manned outpost just within Syria.

By contrast, Isis’s gains in Iraq have been good news for Mr Assad, and his campaign to depict the savage civil war in his own country as a battle against extremists. He has done so even while benefiting from Isis, which has spent much of its time battling other Syrian rebel groups.

“Assad is feeling less pressure now. His narrative of what Islamist rule looks like has been validated,” says Emile Hokayem of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “And Isis – not Assad – has been established as the most urgent threat in the region.”

However – in what could be a troubling development for Mr Assad – he observed that if Iran were forced to devote resources to fighting Isis in Iraq, then Tehran’s contribution to the Syrian regime’s defence could suffer.

Mr Hokayem also suggested that the Kurds of northern Iraq are more likely to consolidate their newly expanded territory and contain Isis rather than seeking to reverse the militants’ gains.

A rising power in Iraq, the Kurds are backed by Turkey but a source of concern for other actors in the region, particularly because the Kurdish population is split between Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey.

In recent years, Ankara has cultivated ties with the Kurdish Regional Government of northern Iraq, which it sees as central to extending Turkish economic and political influence in the region, and helping meet the country’s energy needs.

As the KRG, which prides itself on being the most secure region of Iraq, moves closer to effective independence, that calculation could change.

It has long been regional officials’ nightmare – and some Kurds’ dream – that an independent KRG would undermine the territorial integrity of the neighbouring states by threatening to splinter off their own Kurdish populations.

Hamid Abutalebi, a political adviser to Iran’s president Hassan Rouhani, called on Thursday for Iraqi Kurds to be “more sensitive” about the unity of Iraq and the ramifications of the crisis for the region.

And yet, many analysts suggest, the Kurds’ advances this week were likely to be more durable than those of Isis. As regional and world powers deliberate moves against what they fear could become a Syrian-Iraqi caliphate, the Kurds are set to bolster their gains.

FT.com