Jalal Talabani 'regrets' Iraqi Kurd threat to Turkey  10.4.2007

Responding to the remarks, Erdogan warned Iraqi Kurds on Monday that hostility toward his country could result in a "very heavy cost" for them in the future and charged that the Iraqi Kurdish leader had "overstepped the line".

Turkey says the referendum on Kirkuk's future status, scheduled for the end of the year, should be postponed arguing that thousands of Kurds have been moved into the city to change its demography.

Ankara worries that Kurdish control of Kirkuk and its vast oil reserves would embolden what it believes are Kurdish ambitions to break away from Baghdad.

Kurdish independence in Iraq, it fears, could fuel the two-decade separatist insurgency led by the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in southeast Turkey, which has already resulted in more than 37,000 deaths.

Tensions are already high between the two sides over Turkish accusations that Iraqi Kurds tolerate, and even support, thousands of PKK rebels who have found refuge in the mountains of northern Iraq.

Beki said Erdogan urged Talabani during their telephone conversation to take measures against militants of the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) holed up in northern Iraq.

"Talabani said they were ready to fight against the PKK as part of a common plan with Ankara," the spokesman added.

Turkey has long pressed Baghdad and the United States to crack down on PKK camps in northern Iraq where, it claims the rebels are able to obtain weapons and explosives for attacks on Turkish targets.

The US says it is working to curb the PKK through non-military means such as cutting off its financial resources.

Ankara has threatened a cross-border operation into northern Iraq to crack down on the rebel camps if Baghdad and Washington fail to act against them.

AFP  

** 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. The Iraqi Constitution mandates that a referendum on control of Kirkuk must be held by the end of this year 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 more than 20 million live in Turkey.

Turkey is home to more than 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.

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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