Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog

ARTICLE: "As Kurds' Status Improves, Support for Militants Erodes in Turkey," by Sabrina Tavernise, New York Times, 2 November 2007, p. A10.

ARTICLE: "Turkish-Bred Prosperity Makes War Less Likely in Iraqi Kurdistan: Bellicose Talk Aside, All Gain From Peace," by Richard A. Oppel, Jr., New York Times, 7 November 2007, p. A12.

For now, the important forms of connectivity are very different.

For Turkish Kurds, it's mostly about internal political connectivity: finding a voice in the political system.

For Turks and Iraqi Kurds, it's mostly about transnational economic connectivity: the Turks are simply making too much money to want to screw this up.

Inside Turkey, the great rule set reset is pursued largely to gain EU acceptance. Now if the EU can only come through.

Between Turkey and Iraqi Kurds, it's mostly about the Kurds' great desire to establish their own political identity by creating economic facts on the ground, with 80 percent of the outside investment being from Turkey. Meanwhile, Turkish troops working the border PKK issue regularly interact with Kurdish pesh merga militia forces, with no serious problems to date.

Of course, if things get hot and heavy, all that can change. It's just that, with this growing connectivity, the threshold for "hot and heavy" gets a lot higher.

I mean, eventually we stopped invading Canada and Germany stopped invading France.