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Turkey says Iraq must not be split up
14.11.2006 |
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ANKARA, November
14, -- Turkey on Tuesday condemned suggestions that
dividing its eastern neighbour Iraq into three
separate states could bring peace, saying such a
move would instead plunge the whole region into
chaos.
"God forbid, if Iraq breaks up, an unbelievably dark
new period will begin," Foreign Minister Abdullah
Gul said, using unusually strong language.
"In such an event, Iraq's neighbours will not have
the same attitude as today, of course. The world
should know this," he told parliament's budget
committee, signalling that Turkey and other
neighbours would not stay quietly on the sidelines.
Ankara, a NATO ally of the United States, is
especially worried about the possible emergence of
an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq that
could stoke separatism among its own large Kurdish
population in southeast Turkey.
Iran and Syria also oppose the creation of a Kurdish
state.
Some U.S. politicians including Senator Joseph Biden,
a Democrat who is expected to head the Senate's
Committee on Foreign Relations, have suggested
creating three largely autonomous regions for Iraq's
Shi'ites in the south, Sunni Arabs in the centre and
Kurds in the north.
"This kind of simplistic approach would definitely
drag the country into chaos and can never be an
alternative," said Gul, evoking the bloody breakup
of Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
Peter Galbraith, Former U.S. State Department
Official mention earlier, the country has
already broken up. And actually, I'm opposed to
using U.S. resources to try to put it back together
again.
Kurdistan in the north is already a de facto
independent state. It has its own elected
government. It has its own army. It flies its own
flag. The Iraqi army is not allowed to go to
Kurdistan. The Iraqi flag is banned there.
Gul also urged Kurds, Arabs and Turkish-speaking
Turkmen to forge a compromise over the fate of
Kirkuk and its oil reserves in Kurdistan region
(northern Iraq).
Ankara fears the region's dominant Kurds aim to turn
Kirkuk into the capital of a new state.
The former Iraqi president forced about 250,000
Kurdish residents of Kirkuk to give up their homes
to Arabs in the 1970s, to "Arabize" the city and the
region's oil industry.
Kirkuk city is not under the full control of
Kurdistan Regional Government administration. A
referendum is to be held in late 2007 to decide
whether the oil-rich Kurdish province should be
annexed to the safe semiautonomous Kurdistan region
in Iraq's north.
Reuters
The use of the term "Kurdistan" is vigorously
rejected due to its alleged political implications
by the Republic of Turkey, which does not recognize
the existence of a "Turkish Kurdistan".
Others estimate as many as 40 million Kurds live in
Big Kurdistan (Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Iran, Armenia),
which covers an area as big as France, about half of
all Kurds which estimate to 20 million live in
Turkey.
The Kurdish flag flown officially in Iraqi Kurdistan but
unofficially flown by Kurds in Armenia. The flag is
banned in Iran, Syria, and Turkey where flying it is
a criminal offence"
Southeastern Turkey:
North Kurdistan (
Kurdistan-Turkey) wikipedia
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