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Turkey warns of "very big civil war" in
Kirkuk 28.1.2007 |
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January 28, 2007
Istanbul, -- Turkey warned Saturday against
integrating the multiethnic city of Kirkuk, northern
Iraq, into an autonomous Kurdistan region.
'I fear that it could come to a very big civil war,'
said Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Ergodan in
a television interview.
'Kirkuk belongs to all Iraqis,' he said. 'It would
be wrong to give the city to only one ethnic group.'
Turkey fears that Kurdish control of the oil-rich
city could lead to the creation of a Kurdish state
in northern Iraq and one which is capable of
surviving economically.
Erdogan called for Kirkuk to be given a special
status, and said the referendum scheduled for late
2007 on the future of the city as foreseen by the
Iraqi constitution, was a mistake.
The referendum should at least be postponed, he
said. Resolving the problem would be an important
step towards peace and for the future of the city.
on Friday, The US Department of State said it
supported Iraq's
plan to hold a referendum on Kirkuk and
reiterated its view that the problem had to be
solved as outlined in the Iraqi constitution.
Article 140 of the constitution that passed in 2005
envisages holding a referendum on the future of
Kirkuk by the end of this year.
Sean McCormack, spokesman for the department, said
during a routine press conference, "The way to solve
the Kirkuk problem is in the Iraqi constitution and
the Iraqis have already a running process in their
hands that tells them how to determine the status of
Kirkuk."
In the last KRG (Kurdistan Regional Government)
Parliament session about Kirkuk,
a Turkmen MP made a
speech in the parliament. It showed the
participation of Turkmen in the Kurdish region. This
was shown on the Kurdish channel Kurdistan TV.
He said: “I will say this in Turkish so Turks
understand this, we are Turkmen and not Turks”. He
also said Turkey is doing more damage to the
Turkmeni people then any good.
Also a Iraqi Turkmen politician asked Turkey to stop
interfering with their business, he said why is
Turkey talking about Turkmeni rights after we got
those rights and not when Saddam was oppressing us?”
On January 23, Iraq's environment minister has said
that the Baghdad
government will not tolerate any external
interference in its affairs, saying the city of
Kirkuk, in Kurdistan, was an internal issue, "over
which no foreign country has a right to interfere."
The President of Iraqi Kurdistan autonomous region
and leader Kurdistan Democratic Party (IKDP),
Massoud Barzani, has asserted that Turkey is
following an "aggressive
policy" in terms of its stance on the northern
Iraqi Kurdish city of Kirkuk.
While noting that despite its Kurdish majority,
Kirkuk would represent symbolically the brotherhood
of Kurds, Arabs, and Turkmeni living in Iraq.
Barzani also added: "This stance of Turkey's is not
important for us. These outburts are just election
propaganda, aimed at domestic policy.
Kurdistan Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani on
Wednesday, January 24, said "the Turkish
threats will not scare us. The era of threats has
ended and we were never a factor of threat for
regional states." He added that had the Kurds wanted
to take Kirkuk by force they would have done it
after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime.
he also said the Kurds were not demanding to take
back Kirkuk just for oil but because they were
evicted from their homes there during the former
Iraqi regime.
He also said talks would start next week with the
Iraqi government to reach an oil law.
"The Kurds are not demanding Kirkuk for the oil and
the oil law to be worked out with the Iraqi
government will solve 60% of the problem," Barzani
told an extraordinary session of Kurdistan National
Assembly.
"When we reach a solution to the oil issue then 60%
of Kirkuk problem will be automatically solved as
everyone will see that we are not demanding Kirkuk
because of the oil but because of the historical
injustices committed against us in this city,"
Barzani said.
"The Kurds are now demanding Kirkuk because they
were evicted of their homes during the time of the
former regime."
"Demanding Kirkuk is all about the land and it is
one of the hardest things that someone comes and
occupies your home," Barzani said.
DPA | Agencies
The former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein forced
more than 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 is a Kurdistani city and it lies just
south border of the Kurdistan autonomous region and
it 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.
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