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June 22, 2010
Essay Contest: $100 To Anyone Who Can Explain Why the Kurds Don't Deserve Their Own State
At First Things.
The main reason to object to a state has been our desire to make nice-nice with Turkey, previously seen as a bastion of secularism and Western orientation in the Muslim world. Granting the Kurds a state could radicalize Turkey (given that there are a lot of Kurds in Turkey, especially along the Iraq border) and they'd begin... well, doing the not-so-nice things people tend to do when their political destiny is within reach.
Since Turkey has decided to go Islamist, that's not such a big consideration any longer.
It could, however, hurt our position in Iraq. The Sunnis rely upon alliance with the Kurds to manage their way in Shi'a dominated Iraq, and with the Kurds removed from the occasion, the Sunnis might feel like an even more threatened minority and... well, start doing the not-so-nice things that they had previously been doing.