National Post, Issues & Ideas
By Daniel Pipes
October 30, 2007
About 100,000 Turkish troops, backed by aircraft and tanks, are poised to enter Iraq for counterterrorism purposes. But once there, they might just stay permanently, occupying the Mosul area, leading to dangerous regional consequences.
To understand this danger requires a refresher in Turkish irredentist ambitions going back to the 1920s. The Ottoman Empire emerged from World War One on the losing side, a status codified in 1920 by the Treaty of Sevres imposed on it by the victorious Allies. The treaty placed some Ottoman territory under international control and much of the rest under separate Armenian, French, Greek, Italian and Kurdish control, leaving Turkish rule to continue only in a northwest Anatolian statelet. Full Text
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