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Iraqi Kurdish group protests exclusion of
Kurds at Turkish conference on Kirkuk 15.1.2007
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Ankara, Turkey,
January 15, -- A Kurdish group denounced a
conference on the future of the Iraqi Kurdish city
of Kirkuk, accusing the organizers Monday of bias —
a harbinger of the tensions that lie ahead in the
fight for control of the oil-rich city.
Ethnically mixed Kirkuk is at the center of a
struggle for power among Arabs, ethnic Turkmen and
the region's Kurds, who claim the area as their own
and hope it eventually will be included an enclave
of self-rule in northern Iraq.
"We, the Kurds, believe that Kirkuk is a city of
Kurdistan," Bahros Galali, the Ankara representative
for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan led by Iraqi
President Jalal Talabani, said in a statement.
Turkey, however, fears that Iraq's Kurds will seize
control of Kirkuk as part of a push for an
independent Kurdish state on the Turkey-Iraq border.
Ankara wants to prevent Kirkuk and its giant pool of
underground oil from becoming an economic engine
that could fund an Iraqi Kurdish bid for
independence — which could further encourage
Turkey's separatist Kurdish guerrillas, based in
northern Iraq, who have been fighting for autonomy
in a war that has killed 37,000 people since 1984. |
Kirkuk city |
Nejat Eslen, a retired brigadier general
representing the Ankara-based think tank Global
Strategy Institute, told the conference that
developments in northern Iraq had the potential of
creating a "domino effect" across the region.
Eslen said maintaining Turkey's unity depends on
preventing incidents that go against its interests
in the area.
However, Galali criticized the Global Strategy
Institute, which organized Monday's conference, as
biased for inviting Arab and Turkmen — but not
Kurdish groups — to take part in the discussions
over Kirkuk's future.
"We see this as an intervention in Iraq's internal
affairs," he said. The think tank only asked the
Iraqi Kurdish groups to relay their thoughts by fax,
without issuing invitations.
Kirkuk, an ancient city that once was part of the
Ottoman Empire, has a large minority of ethnic Turks
as well as Christians, Shiite and Sunni Arabs,
Armenians and Assyrians.
Since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, Kurdish
forces in northern Iraq have rallied to reverse what
they claim to be an "Arabization" policy under
Saddam Hussein to purge Kirkuk and other oil-rich
areas of Kurds and replace them with Arabs.
The former Iraqi president forced about 250,000
Kurdish residents to give up their homes to Arabs in
the 1970s, to "Arabize" the city and the region's
oil industry.
Kirkuk city lies just south border of the Kurdistan
autonomous region stretching across Iraq's
northeast. Kirkuk is not under the full control of
Kurdistan Regional Government administration.
Kurdish leaders want to annex the city, and Iraq's
constitution calls for a referendum on the issue by
the end of this year.
Thousands of Kurdish settlers from northern Iraq
have flooded back into Kirkuk, colonizing the city's
desert outskirts.
Many believe the influx is a bid to change the
city's ethnic balance ahead of a 2007 census and
referendum to decide whether Kirkuk will be annexed
to Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region.
An Iraq Study Group assessment issued in Washington
recently described Kirkuk as a "powder keg" and
recommended that the referendum be delayed.
The Turkish government has called on the United
States to act against separatist Kurdish guerrillas
and to contain Iraqi Kurds from seizing Kirkuk.
Turkey's main opposition party said Sunday it would
back a cross-border offensive against the Kurdish
guerrillas if necessary, a possibility the
government did not rule out.
Turkish leaders were expected to discuss the issue
during a visit Thursday and Friday by U.S.
Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns.
AP
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