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Iraqi Kurds Hold The Keys To Turkey's
Dilemma 25.10.2007
By Charles Recknagel |
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October
25, 2007
Iraqi Kurds, threatened with a military incursion by
Turkey, find themselves in a pivotal -- and ironic
-- position as Ankara and Washington search for ways
to end attacks by Turkish Kurdish militants holed up
in semi-autonomous Kurdistan region 'northern Iraq'.
In recent days, Turkey has deployed some 100,000
troops to the border areas of Kurdish-administered
northern Iraq -- proof that Ankara is determined to
force the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants
out of its strongholds on the other side. At the
same time, Turkey says it still wants a diplomatic
solution to a crisis which has seen scores of
Turkish troops killed in cross-border raids by PKK
forces.
Ankara's diplomatic efforts focus on pressing Iraq's
Kurdistan regional government (KRG) to take action
against the PKK. But negotiations are not easy. To
send Iraqi Kurdish fighters, the peshmerga, against
the PKK -- possibly with the support of U.S. air
power -- Iraqi Kurds will demand a high price from
Ankara.
How high a price is the million-dollar question.
Ankara has never, and still
does not, recognize the KRG and refuses to meet with
its representatives in any official capacity. That
reflects Ankara's fear that any international
respect shown to the autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan
region would only embolden Turkey's own Kurdish
minority to seek similar home-rule status.
As Ankara and Washington look for solutions from the
Iraqi Kurdish leaders -- who are among the strongest
supporters of the United States in Iraq -- those
same leaders see the crisis as presenting them with
some valuable bargaining power. The target for any
bargain is Turkey. The price is what Ankara might
give in exchange for Iraqi Kurds moving against the
PKK.
U.S. Pressure On Iraqi Kurds
In its diplomatic push, Turkey has the support of
Washington. The U.S. government -- which lists the
PKK as a terrorist organization -- is also putting
pressure on the Iraqi Kurds to push the PKK out.
"The United States is determined to work with our
allies in Iraq and to work with our allies in Turkey
to try and deal with what is a very difficult
situation of terrorism from a fairly remote part of
northern Iraq," U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice said on October 23. "And it requires
information sharing, it requires a great deal of
coordination."
But so far, the U.S. pressure on the Iraqi Kurds has
not yielded much result. The State Department's
senior Iraq adviser, David Satterfield, suggested on
October 23 that Washington wants to see Iraq's
Kurdish leaders do more. "We are not pleased with
the lack of action," he told reporters in the U.S.
capital, without specifying what kind of action he
meant.
In public, Turkey is bargaining solely through the
Baghdad government. That was on display this week as
the Turkish foreign minister, Ali Babacan, visited
Baghdad. Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said
he assured Babacan that Iraq "will not allow any
party or any group, including the PKK, to poison our
bilateral relations. And also I reassured [Babacan]
that the Iraqi government will actively help Turkey
to overcome this menace."
But the fact that Zebari is also a top official of
one of the dominant Iraqi Kurdish parties may belie
the appearance that this is entirely a
state-to-state affair. Zebari is from the Kurdistan
Democratic Party (KDP), whose support base is the
region that abuts the Turkish border. Both the KDP,
and its partner in the KRG, the Patriotic Union of
Kurdistan (PUK), have strong militias that are
nominally part of Iraq's army but ultimately answer
to the Kurdish parties.
Sami Shoresh, a former KRG minister, says the Iraqi
Kurds are ready to discuss with Ankara alternative
solutions to a Turkish invasion. But only if Ankara
meets certain conditions. "The Kurds of Iraq have
said that if the Turkish government announces a
peaceful solution for the situation of the PKK
inside Iraqi Kurdistan, and if the PKK refuses this
political solution, then at that time the Kurds
would be ready to think with the Americans, with the
Iraqi government, with the Turkish government, about
another kind of solution," he says.
This position recognizes that the PKK have had bases
in Iraq since the 1980s and -- even though both the
KDP and PUK have periodically fought with the PKK in
shifting alliances since then -- there is some
popular sympathy in northern Iraq for Turkish Kurd
separatists.
But would Turkey offering a political solution to
the PKK really be enough? Some independent observers
with close ties to the KRG say privately that the
price the Iraqi Kurds want is much higher. They say
it could include Ankara formally recognizing the
Kurdish-administered north of Iraq as part of the
federal state of Iraq.
The observers say the recognition demands would at a
minimum include accepting the KRG's representatives
as officials. They might also include withdrawing
Turkish opposition to including oil-rich Kirkuk as
part of the Kurdish self-rule region. The future
status and ethnic make-up of Kirkuk is hotly
contested between Iraqi Kurds, Arabs, and Turkomans
-- a Turkic-speaking minority community whose claims
are backed by Ankara.
Limited Turkish Leverage
As Turkey pursues diplomacy on the Iraqi side of the
border, but threatens invasion by massing its forces
on the Turkish side, does it have any other ways to
step up pressure on the Iraqi Kurds to act? In the
past, one such lever might have been economic
action. Despite Turkey's nonrecognition of the Iraqi
Kurdish area, cross-border trade is high and some
800 Turkish companies are working in the
Kurdish-administered area.
Indeed, some of the area's largest construction
projects -- funded in part by taxes on oil exports
to Turkey -- have been completed by Turkish firms.
They include the region's two airports, in Erbil and
Al-Sulaimaniyah.
But former minister Shoresh says that the time when
Turkey could simply isolate northern Iraq
economically by closing the border is now long gone.
"Until now, there is nothing in the way of economic
pressure from Turkey and maybe this has a link with
another matter, which is the fact the Kurds now have
many airports and they have good links with the
whole world and even if Turkey closes the [border]
gate, yes, there will be bad effects on the Kurdish
economy but not as bad as those worst effects which
we experienced 10 years ago," he says.
If so, Turkey's options now are just two. Send its
army -- which is NATO's second largest -- into Iraq
despite Washington's opposition. Or negotiate the
price for Iraqi-Kurd assistance.
Where the bargaining leads -- and whether it might
yet end in Turkish military action -- is hard to
predict. But over the coming days, and possibly
weeks, intense behind-the-scenes negotiations appear
to be more likely than a cross-border operation by
the Turkish military.
rferl org
* Since 1991, the Kurds of Iraq achieved self-rule
in part of the country. Today's teenagers are the
first generation to grow up under Kurdish rule. In
the new Iraqi Constitution, it is referred to as
Kurdistan region. Kurdistan region has all the
trappings of an independent state -- its own
constitution, its own parliament, its own flag, its
own army, its own border, its own border patrol, its
own national anthem, its own education system, its
own International airports, even its own stamp inked
into the passports of visitors.
**
Kurds are not recognized as an official minority in
Turkey and are denied rights granted to other
minority groups. Under EU pressure, Turkey recently
granted Kurds limited rights for broadcasts and
education in the Kurdish language, but critics say
the measures do not go far enough.
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" Southeast
Turkey.
Others estimate over 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.
Turkey is home to over 25 million ethnic Kurds, some
of whom openly sympathise with the Kurdish PKK for a
Kurdish homeland in the country's mainly Kurdish
southeast of Turkey.
Before August 2002, the Turkish government placed
severe restrictions on the use of Kurdish language,
prohibiting the language in education and broadcast
media.
The Kurdish alphabet is still not recognized
in Turkey, and use of the Kurdish letters X, W, Q
which do not exist in the Turkish
alphabet has led to judicial persecution in 2000 and
2003
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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