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Ankara's real agenda is to block any possibility of
an independent Kurdistan on its border
16.6.2007
Northern Iraq’s Tangled Web By John Feffer |
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Northern Iraq’s Tangled Web
June
16, 2007
There are few areas in the world more entangled in
historical deceit and betrayal than northern Iraq,
where the British, the Ottomans, and the Americans
have played a deadly game of political chess at the
expense of the local Kurds. And now, because of a
volatile brew of internal Iraqi and Turkish
politics, coupled with the Bush administration’s
clandestine war to destabilize and overthrow the
Iranian government, the region threatens to explode
into a full-scale regional war.
A series of bombings and attacks over the past year
in Turkey touched off the current crisis. The Turks
attribute the violence to the Iraq-based Kurdistan
Workers Party (PKK), which fought a bitter war
against the Turks from 1984 through the 1990s.
Ankara’s campaign to repress its Kurdish population
during that period ended up killing some 35,000
people, destroying 3,000 villages, and forcibly
relocating between 500,000 and 2 million Kurds. The
Kurds make up about 20% of Turkey and Iraq and have
a significant presence in Syria and Iran. With a
population of between 25 and 30 million, the Kurds
represent one of the world’s largest ethnic groups
without a country, a status that has long aggrieved
them.
In May, the Turks declared martial law in three
provinces that border Iraq. They massed troops,
armor, and artillery, and threatened to invade if
the United States and the Iraqi government of Prime
Minister Nouri al-Maliki did not suppress the PKK.
It looked like a conflict simply between the Turkish
government and the Kurdish separatists. But things
are never quite what they appear in northern Iraq.
Independent Kurdistan?
While the Turks are indeed concerned about the
activities of the PKK, Ankara’s real agenda is to
block any possibility of an independent Kurdish
nation on its border. The Turkish Army is also
whipping up nationalism in an effort to influence
the outcome of the July 22 Turkish elections.
Turkey is deeply worried that an upcoming plebiscite
in Kirkuk could make the oil-rich city, which the
Kurds claim as their capital, a part of Kurdistan.
Ankara fears that if Kirkuk joins Kurdistan, the
Kurds will obtain the economic base they need to
build a Kurdish state, which will, in turn, stir up
Turkey’s restive Kurds to demand independence or
autonomy. The Turks charge that the Kurds are trying
to influence the outcome of the plebiscite by
driving 200,000 Turkomen and Arabs out of the city,
and moving in 600,000 Kurds. This would reverse the
1980s population shift when Saddam Hussein forced
many Kurds out of Kirkuk, moving in Arab families to
take their place. To keep the Kurdistan Regional
Government (KRG) as an ally, the Maliki government
is backing the plebiscite and supporting a plan to
remove 12,000 Arab families from Kirkuk and send
them back to their original homes in central and
southern Iraq.
Ankara blames the United States for ignoring the
issue of Kirkuk and turning a blind eye to the PKK.
“It is widely acknowledged,” says Syrian historian
and journalist Sami Moubayed, “that the PKK cannot
operate out of northern Iraq without the full
blessing of Maliki, [Iraqi] President Jalal Talabani
(a Kurd) and the United States.”
Attacking Iran
Rather than suppressing the PKK, the United States
is using its offshoot, the Party for a Free Life in
Kurdistan (PEJAK), to attack Iran. According to a
Financial Times investigation last year, U.S.
Marines are working with Iranian minorities to see
if “Iran would be prone to violent fragmentation
along the same kind of fault lines that are
splitting Iraq.”
Farsi speakers dominate Iran, but they make up only
a slim majority of the country. The rest of the
population consists of Kurds, Arabs, Azeris, and
Baluchs. The United States is also supporting a
violent Baluch group, the Jundallah, which killed 11
Revolutionary Guard this past February in southern
Iran.
“I think everybody in the region knows that there is
a proxy war already afoot, with the United States
supporting anti-Iranian elements in the region as
well as opposition groups in Iran,” says Vali Nasr
of the Council on Foreign Relations. Investigative
journalist Seymour Hersh says that PRJAK is also
receiving help from Israel, and that there are some
1,200 Israeli intelligence agents in northern Iraq.
According to Meir Javedanfar, an Israeli expert on
the Kurds, Israel is using the Kurdish areas of Iraq
“to undermine Iran’s influence” and “the Iranian
government itself.”
PKK’s Usefulness
The Islamacist Maliki government, with its ties to
extremist Shiite militias and Iran, is no friend of
the secular and socialist-minded PKK. But Maliki
needs Kurdish support in his battle with former
Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, whose coalition of
former Baathists, Sunnis, secular Shiites, and
disgruntled Kurds that has designs on bringing down
Maliki’s government. And while the current Kurdistan
Regional Government (KRG) -- a coalition of the
formerly warring Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and
the Kurdistan Democratic Party -- has no great love
for the PKK, the organization is tough and
battle-hardened and has become an invaluable ally
against a rising tide of Islamicism in the Kurdish
region.
The United States is hoping the KRG will rein in the
PKK. One anonymous Iraqi official says Henri J.
Barkey, chair of international relations at Lehigh
University and widely considered to be the top
U.S.-Turkish scholar. This, he said, could lead to
“a severe rupture in U.S.-Turkish relations” and
“deal a fatal blow” to U.S. efforts in Iraq.
Northern Iraq has always been a complicated place,
but the U.S. war has sharpened the tensions that
have plagued it for over a century. Now those
tensions have pushed the region to the brink of
chaos.
Source: fpif org
** 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.
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.
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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