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Iraqi Kurds says Turkey is after Kirkuk,
not PKK
7.11.2007
Analysis - By BEN LANDO
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November
7, 2007
WASHINGTON, -- The protest sign was plain
enough, black ink on white poster board. But the
message Jamel Numan was carrying amidst 200 of
America’s Iraqi Kurds rallying outside the White
House Monday was both simply blunt and highlighted
the overlooked complexity of Turkey’s beef with the
Kurdistan Workers’ Party guerrillas: “Is this really
about PKK? Or is this about Kirkuk?”
Numan, a 53-year-old now living in Nashville, a hub
of American Kurds, echoed the fears of Kurds -- that
Turkey is amassing troops on their border “so they
can take over the Kurdish region of Iraq.”
Inside the White House Turkish Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan and President Bush discussed Turkey’s
threats to take military action against the Turkish
Kurd separatist strongholds in Iraqi mountains on
the other side of the Turkish border.
An estimated 3,000 PKK guerrillas are based in the
Qandil Mountains, where Turkey alleges the most
recent of the PKK’s decades-old campaign has been
planned. Eight kidnapped Turkish troops were
released Sunday in a brief slowdown of bluster
between the sides. But the PKK, which the United
States and Turkey recognize as a terrorist group,
has killed dozens of troops and citizens in attacks
in recent months.
The separatist group’s original goal was for an
independent country of Kurdistan -- and tens of
thousands of innocent people were killed in their
fight in the 1980s -- but now it wants more autonomy
and cultural recognition by Turkey.
Turkey has made numerous limited incursions into
northern Iraq in the past, but the PKK remains.
Meanwhile, Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government has
capitalized on its own semi-autonomy since 2003,
creating a rare zone in Iraq of relative security,
political evolution and economic success. The
Kurdistan region government (KRG), which contains
only 0.5 percent of Iraq’s 115 billion barrels of
proven reserves, announced Tuesday it signed seven
new exploration and development oil deals with
foreign companies and formed its own KRG-owned oil
company.
www.ekurd.net
Kirkuk is the city Iraqi Kurds want to make their
capital, drenched in oil but cut from Iraq’s Kurdish
provinces when Saddam Hussein redrew the boundaries.
He forced out Kurds, as well as Turkomen and
residents of other ethnicities, replacing them
with Sunni Arabs.
The city is an increasing hotbed of violence as a
controversial referendum draws near. Voters in
Kirkuk and other disputed territories currently
outside the KRG's authority will decide whether to
join it. The referendum, called for in the 2005
constitution -- an inclusion that’s an example of
the power Iraq’s Kurds wield throughout Iraq -- is
behind schedule.
It’s likely to miss the year-end deadline and
increase tensions between Iraq’s Kurdish and Arab
leaders. Turkey has already weighed in, fearing
adding Kirkuk’s estimated 11 billion barrels of
proven reserves to KRG control would bolster the
northern Iraq region’s autonomy and empower its own
Kurdish population. Iran -- which along with Syria,
Iraq and Turkey is home to more than 22 million
Kurds, according to the CIA’s World Factbook -- has
called for delaying the referendum.
Kirkuk is also the starting point of two pipelines
that export oil to Turkey. The pipelines have a
total capacity of 1.6 million barrels per day, but
attacks from Sunni insurgents have kept them offline
more than online since the start of the U.S.-led
liberation in March 2003.
Turkish companies are the biggest investor in the
KRG, though the Turkish government channels all
official diplomatic and economic dialogue through
Baghdad.
Turkey demands Washington, Baghdad and the KRG do
more to prevent the PKK from operating and accuse
KRG officials of aiding the “terrorist organization
which has deployed itself in northern Iraq,” Erdogan
said at a joint, albeit brief, news conference with
Bush following their meeting Tuesday.
The two talked of the increased importance of
sharing intelligence, “and it is important that we
fight jointly against the leaders, the murderers of
this organization,” Erdogan said. U.S. and Turkish
military leaders will communicate more, but Bush and
Erdogan didn’t weigh in on any specific actions.
Erdogan said he would delay any military decisions
until after the meeting.
The United States is stuck between Turkey and the
Kurds, U.S. allies in their own right, and is having
trouble satisfying both.
This year is the war’s deadliest for U.S. troops,
and Washington’s hawk talk over Iran is increasing,
so another war front, especially one inside the Iraq
adventure’s only empirical success story, will have
long legs and leave heavy footprints.
“Clearly the Turks got themselves into a pickle by
pressing for change when clearly the Americans
weren’t going to give them the green light to go
into Iraq,” said Joost Hiltermann, director of the
International Crisis Group's Middle East Project.
Now the United States must “help Turkey down without
alienating the Kurds in Iraq.”
www.ekurd.net
Turkey sees the KRG position as “a situation where
they’re depending on Turkey and depending on the
central government and need to be reminded every so
often not to let the PKK roam freely," Hiltermann
said.
“It’s PKK and its Kirkuk, those are the two issues.
Everything else, it can be resolved.”
“Of course, (Turkey) should be finding a political
solution to the Kurds in Turkey and not a military
one," he said, but Turkey's civilian and military
leadership are at loggerheads in Ankara and the PKK
is a flashpoint.
The Turkish Parliament last month authorized
military action -- to what extent remains to be
seen. There are an estimated 100,000 or more troops
on the border. Airstrikes, however, have been tossed
out as the best way to combat the PKK, who are more
familiar with the mountainous terrain.
“You don’t send 100,000 troops to fight 3,000
guerrillas,” 22-year-old Kovan Morat of Nashville
said just after the throng of his fellow Kurdish
protestors approached a dozen pro-Turkish
flag-wavers across from the White House. Police and
Kurdish leaders made a human barrier preventing any
physical interaction.
“Kirkuk is Kurdistan and would ensure Kurdish people
of an identity … and economically stabilize
Kurdistan and the move to independence,” Morat said.
“They don’t want to let this happen.”
Iraq’s Kurdish population may feel the wrath of
Turkey’s response to the PKK, but they by and large
feel it’s a problem of Turkey’s making.
“It’s (Turkey’s) failure to deal with the PKK
problem,” said 28-year-old Fatima Sindy of Manassas,
Va., one of the leaders of Monday’s protest, “to
deal with its internal problems.”
“Turkey is not afraid of the PKK,” she said. “It’s
afraid of an independent Kurdish state.”
Kurdistan region President Massoud Barzani,
co-leader of Iraqi Kurds along with Iraqi President
Jalal Talabani, agrees.
www.ekurd.net
"Honestly, I am about to be convinced that the PKK
is only an excuse and that part of the real target
is the Kurdistan region itself," Barzani told Time
Magazine.
“If they invade and enter the Iraqi Kurdistan region
and they attack us, of course we have to defend
ourselves,” Barzani said. “If they attack our
people, our interests, our territories, then there
will be no limit."
UPI
* Kirkuk city is a
Kurdish 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, its population
is a mix of majority Kurds and minority of Arabs,
Turkmen.
The former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein forced
over 250,000 Kurdish residents to give up their
homes to Arabs in the 1970s, to "Arabize" the city
and the region's oil industry.
Based on Iraq's Constitution 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.
**
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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