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Do Turkey have a dialogue with the Kurds
of Iraq?
5.3.2007
By Ilnur Cevik
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March 5, 2007
On Sunday Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister
Abdullah Gul met with Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar
Zebari on the sidelines of the Arab League meeting
in Cairo. Some observers in Ankara saw this as the
first dialogue between Ankara and the Iraq's Kurdish
leadership simply because Zebari is a leading Kurd…
This is misleading. Yes, Zebari is a leading Kurd.
As a mater of fact he is not only a prominent member
of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) but he is
also the uncle of Massoud Barzani. So he is
influential and also authoritative. But there is
also a catch. He has been meeting Gul for months at
various occasions yet none of them have really
solved the problems between Ankara and the Iraqi
Kurds simply because they are not really regarded as
dialogue between Ankara and Erbil. They are
essentially accepted as a dialogue between Ankara
and Baghdad.
So Zebari could act as a messenger between Ankara
and Erbil and could convey to Kurdistan president
Massoud Barzani the sensitivities of the Turkish
government over the Iraqi Kurdish leader's remarks
on the PKK and Kirkuk which has angered the Turks.
It is good that Zebari, who has been negotiating in
the past between Ankara and Erbil, to hear for
himself the sensitivities of the Turkish leaders and
the AK party government and inform the Barzanis as
well as Jalal Talabani about all this.
However, many of the current problems between Ankara
and Erbil have to be discussed in earnest directly
between Turkish and Iraqi Kurdish leaders at various
levels.
Some people claimed recently that Ankara and Erbil
do have some contacts. This is misleading. Safeen
Dizayee who is the foreign relations director of the
KDP has been in Ankara recently to move his house
(he is married to a Turk) and took the occasion to
meet some Foreign Ministry officials as well as
Prof. Ahmet Davutoglu, the chief advisor of the
prime minister. Some people seem to think this is a
part of the dialogue while Dizayee was trying to
convince the Turkish officials for the need to start
a dialogue in these meetings. There were even
suggestions at that point that Gul could meet
secretly with Kurdistan region PM Necirvan Barzani
in late February but that never materialized.
These are all feelers and pulse finding before any
dialogue can start. However, it is clear that
Kurdish leaders like Massoud Barzani have to take
extra care not to make statements that anger the
Turkish public.
We have been reading a long list of analyses on
Kirkuk and we see with great alarm that the
situation is heading for crisis.
Such issues have to be taken up between the Iraqi
Kurdish leaders and Ankara before the issue
snowballs into a complicated crisis. The situation
on Kirkuk is pressing. A census is scheduled for the
summer and a referendum in November. The Kurds
insist the census and referendum will be held on
schedule but we feel this may become a mission
impossible. Turks and Kurds have to discuss this
issue and come to some sort of understanding before
it is too late.
The Turkish public has to be satisfied that
something will be done about the PKK not only inside
Turkish borders but also inside Kurdistan region
(northern Iraq) in areas controlled by the Kurdish
leadership.
All these mean we need dialogue but not the kind
between Gul and Zebari. The real dialogue will start
when and if Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan
meets President Jalal Talabani in Baghdad.
thenewanatolian com
**
The former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein 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 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, its population
is a mix of majority Kurds and minority of Arabs,
Turkmen.
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.
** 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 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.
Turkey is home to some 20 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
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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