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All Eyes on Kirkuk
5.5.2007
By Goran Sadjadi |
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May 5, 2007
Kirkuk, (Iraq)-(Kurdistan region) border, --
While the city of Kirkuk has been spared much of the
violence engulfing regions further south in Iraq,
the threats coming from different groups regarding
the city have only been increasing and explicit
demands remain uncompromising. Major tension between
Iraqi Kurds and neighboring Turkey has been the most
worrisome as both sides threaten armed conflict if
their demands are not met. Both foreign influence
and intervention in Iraq has been of the greatest
concerns for U.S. officials and the conflict
regarding Kirkuk could be all the same. The ongoing
debate regarding the status of the oil-rich city has
consisted of harsh words on all sides, and analysts
expect that this year could be either a turning
point in Iraq for better or for worse.
Saddam for years attempted to "Arabize" Kirkuk by
driving out native Kurds and Turkmen replacing them
with Arabs, many of them Shiites relocated from the
south. Today, Iraqi Kurdish leaders are demanding
the implementation of Article 140 of the Iraqi
Constitution, a crucial article related to the
normalization of the demographics of Kirkuk and
which orders an official referendum regarding the
status of the city in a future federal Iraq.
Most recently to implement this article, the Iraqi
government in Baghdad has endorsed a plan to
relocate thousands of Arabs to their original towns,
giving monetary compensation to those who move
voluntarily. However, news of the plan sparked
outrage among both Iraqi Arab leaders as well as
Turkish politicians.
Iraqi Kurds for several years have demanded the
reversal of Saddam’s injustices and have claimed
that Kirkuk is the heart of Iraqi Kurdistan. Kurdish
leaders have ambitions to annex the oil-rich city of
Kirkuk to their federal region and proclaim it as
their capital. However, the problem lies in the fact
that the city sits on nearly 40 percent of Iraq’s
oil. Turkey fears that such moves would allow Kurds
to gain the economic power they need to move towards
full independence. Turkish officials fear that such
a circumstance would incite separatism among
Turkey’s own Kurdish population, and have called for
a delay in the referendum.
Turkish officials have also claimed their concerns
are for the Iraqi Turkmen communities in Kirkuk. The
Iraqi Turkmen Front (ITF), a coalition of several
Turkmen groups, reportedly receives funding from the
Turkish government in Ankara. While ITF objectives
are aligned with Turkey’s policy in Iraq, the same
may not hold true for the majority of Iraqi Turkmen.
The Iraqi elections in 2005 were a failure for the
ITF, which did not gather more than 1 percent of the
total votes as many Turkmen instead cast their votes
for the Iraqi-Shiite coalition. Divisions within the
Turkmen communities are also indicated by the
existence of other Turkmen groups that disagree with
ITF policy.
Groups such as the Turkmen Democratic Movement
highly oppose Turkey intervening in Iraq’s political
processes, further undermining Turkey’s claims in
protecting Iraqi Turkmen interests. The leader,
Kalkhi Noureddin, says the group was formed after
realizing “foreign interference does not serve the
interests of Turkmens in [Iraqi] Kurdistan”.
Noureddin currently works with the Kurdish
administration and believes that dialogue between
Iraqi Kurds and Turkey is necessary in order to
avoid armed conflict.
Until now, violence in Kirkuk has been blamed
primarily on Sunni and Shiite insurgents. Several
Shiite armed groups such as the Mehdi Army, loyal to
Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, began moving into the
Kirkuk province mid-last year. U.S. officials
declared such Shiite armed groups, reportedly backed
by Iran, as the deadliest threats to the security in
the region. Local residents say their presence is
marked by bomb explosions and murders.
However much the threat of these armed groups as
well as Iran’s alleged influence in the region,
Iraqi officials recently claimed to have found links
between the ongoing violence in Kirkuk and other
foreign forces. Recently, an Iraqi Kurdish official
in Kirkuk, Nejat Hassan, asserted that Iraqi
Security Forces obtained enough evidence to prove
that Turkey’s Intelligence Agency has been carefully
conducting much of the terrorist activity in Kirkuk,
targeting both Iraqi government officials as well as
civilians.
Despite the United States’ own difficulty with their
Turkish NATO ally following the detainment of 11 of
Turkey’s Special Forces who were allegedly plotting
to assassinate Kirkuk’s governor in 2003, U.S.
officials have not responded to the latest
allegations by Iraqi officials. Many Kurds feel
uncomfortable with the Americans’ silent stance on
this issue and believe their reasons are in order to
avoid embarrassment with their Turkish ally.
Still, the conflict in Iraq regarding Kirkuk and
Turkey’s intervention may soon become unavoidable.
Turkey has made several public threats against the
Iraqi Kurdish administration saying that they oppose
any Kurdish-control of Kirkuk. While the Iraqi
constitution outlines a referendum on Kirkuk's
future by the end of this year, Turkey has
threatened an invasion if the district, which
analysts predict the Kurds will win by a majority
vote, falls under the Kurds’ control.
Kurdish officials have complained against such
threats and say their previous requests for dialogue
with Turkey had all been turned down. Some also
suspect that there are ulterior motives in regards
to Kirkuk. Many Turkish politicians have openly
stated that the oil-rich districts of Kirkuk and
Mosul are historically Ottoman. For this reason,
some Kurdish officials say, Turkey wishes to
re-annex the area and its lucrative oil to its
territory.
While the violence in Kirkuk remains minimal when
compared to other cities in the south, threats
continue and the possibility of a large-scale
conflict increases. Tensions in Kirkuk could explode
and even spread further north to Iraqi Kurdistan,
the country’s only stable region. Kurdish officials
have responded to Turkish politicians with their own
threats maintaining that any invasion by the Turkish
military will lead to large-scale clashes with their
own armed forces.
However the politics may turn out remains unclear.
Nevertheless, while U.S. officials condemn foreign
interference resulting in many of the problems
throughout Iraq, Kurdish officials believe the same
applies to Kirkuk as an internal Iraqi affair in
which Turkey should not interfere.
Otherwise, one high-ranking Kurdish official said,
Kurds are willing to bare the consequences of a new
conflict.
Goran Sadjadi is a freelance writer living in the
United States. He visited Turkey and Iraq in August
2005 and is actively engaged in political analysis
of the Kurdistan region and the Middle East.
zmag org |
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=12754
**
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 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.
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.
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