Is it Islamist to reject the Iraqi war?
Reader comment on item: Turkey's Radical Turn?

Submitted by Pseudoerasmus (United States), Aug 5, 2003 at 23:36

I supported the war in Iraq, but I have never understood why proponents of the war have been so unfair with (some of) the opponents. Why should Turkey's parliamentary rejection of the US war in Iraq be counted as evidence that the AKP may be bona fide Islamists? After all, not even the Turkish army, which no one suspects of being pro-Islamist, was particularly sanguine about the war in Iraq. The rigidly secular Turkish left also opposed the US war in Iraq -- for precisely the same reason the left in all countries opposed the US war. But forget ideology. Turkey has a more genuine strategic interest in what happens in Iraq than most other countries (and certainly more than the USA). Not only does the Turkish economy will feel the effects of the war (as it did during Gulf War I), but also the fall of Saddam Hussein may open up the possibility of reigniting Kurdish irredentism in southeastern Anatolia. So Turkish reluctance can be interpreted on ordinary, even trite, national interest grounds.

Of course, the Turks are perhaps lucky to be denigrated merely as incipient Bin-Ladenists. At least they were spared the wave of hysterical and know-nothing francophobia the French were meted out in the USA, all for simply disagreeing with the USA (and the French opposed the war presumably for non-religious reasons).

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