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A fragile stability on Turkey-Iraqi Kurdistan
border
30.7.2007 |
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July
30, 2007
MT. QANDIL, Iraqi Kurdistan,-- The paved road
runs out about 10 miles from the Iranian border, and
so does the authority of the Iraqi government. High
in the jagged peaks above lies territory controlled
by a radical band of Kurdish PKK leftists that has
emerged as the latest threat to the region's
imperiled stability.
At the last Iraqi border checkpoint, a squat gray
castle flanked by fields of sunflowers and melons,
Col. Ahmed Hamid warns travelers that he can't
guarantee their safety.
"If anything happens to you, the Iraqi government is
not responsible," he cautions. "There could be
bombing, and there are terrorists everywhere."
He was referring to fighters of the PKK, or
Kurdistan Workers' Party, who have been launching
guerrilla attacks against Turkey from the
borderlands of the northern Iraqi region of
Kurdistan for the last 16 years, in pursuit of their
dream of an independent state encompassing the
Kurdish areas of Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria.
Now this forgotten frontier and the leftist
revolutionaries living off its land risk becoming
the flash point for a future conflict that could
draw in players from across the region.
In response to a recent surge of PKK attacks, Turkey
has massed up to 140,000 troops along the Iraq
border. They have fired periodic bursts of artillery
toward remote villages on the Iraqi side and
threatened to launch military action unless the PKK
halts its attacks.
Iran also has been reinforcing its side of the
border to deter attacks by a PKK-affiliated Iranian
Kurdish group. The Iranians also have been shelling
the area, most recently on July 22, local villagers
say. Since a U.S. warplane flew over it a little
over a week ago, the Iranians have bolstered their
positions in the area with 2,000 more men, according
to Hamid, though he said he thinks the Iranian move
is defensive.
"They don't want Kurds escaping into Iran if Turkey
attacks the area," he said.
Iraq's Kurds are hoping it won't come to that. They
point out that Kurdistan is the one relative success
story that the U.S.
can point to in Iraq, and they believe the U.S., as
one of Turkey's NATO allies, will be able to
restrain Ankara.
"The only safe area in Iraq is Kurdistan, and if
Turkey destroys this area, it will blacken the face
of the Americans," said Gen. Jaber Manda, the deputy
commander of the Kurdish peshmerga, the former
guerrilla army now responsible for security within
Kurdistan.
Iraq's Kurds attribute much of the Turkish
saber-rattling to the Turkish election campaign and
are hoping that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan's victory in the July 22 election will
diminish the threat of imminent military action.
Erdogan has invited Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki
for talks to discuss the PKK. If the talks fail, he
warned in an election eve pledge, Turkey will launch
military action against Kurdistan (northern Iraq).
Kirkuk referendum feared
The Kurds suspect that the real goal of Turkey's
military buildup goes far beyond the PKK bases. A
referendum is to be held in December in Kirkuk on
whether to absorb the oil-rich Iraqi city into the
region of Kurdistan, something that Turkey fears
would further encourage Kurdish aspirations to
independence. Turkey has made it clear that it does
not want the referendum to go ahead, citing the
potential for civil strife in Iraq, and Kurds
speculate that the troops' presence along the border
is intended to pressure Iraq into delaying the poll.
If that is the case, then Turkey's military presence
along the border threatens to cast a long shadow
over Kurdistan's future, deterring investment and
undermining stability in the one region in Iraq that
is viewed as safe.
"Turkey has a disease, a sensitivity that Kurds
should not have anything. They don't want Kurdistan
to succeed," said Maj. Gen Aziz Wesyi, commander of
the peshmerga's border guards. "If Kurds are a
success anywhere in the world, even in Siberia,
Turkey will interfere. This is the problem."
In Turkey's view, the PKK is a terrorist
organization that has killed more than 15,000 Turks
in the past three decades, and Turkey has as much
right to wage war against it as the U.S. has to
fight terrorism elsewhere. If the U.S. and the Iraqi
government do not do more to crack down on the PKK,
Erdogan warned in a pre-election TV interview, "We
will have to do whatever it takes. And that
'whatever' is obvious."
Iraqi Kurds in no mood to fight
Struggling to recover from decades of conflict,
Kurdish officials say they are in no mood for
another fight. At most, Turkey will launch limited
strikes against the PKK's bases, and Kurdistan will
have little choice but to look the other way,
predicted Sadi Ahmed Pire, a top official in the
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, or PUK, one of the two
main Kurdish parties governing the Kurdish region.
"It takes two sides to make a war," said Pire, an
adviser to Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, who is a
Kurd. "We have to ignore it. We have not one penny
to spend on a another war."
But the Kurdish regional government is equally
disinclined to bow to Turkish pressure to rein in
the activities of the PKK, leaving uncertain the
prospects for dialogue. Iraqi Kurds have fought
three times against the PKK over the last 15 years,
twice alongside Turkish troops, and on each occasion
they were unable to dislodge the PKK from its bases.
That was back when Turkey and Kurdistan enjoyed
relatively warm relations, before the fall of Saddam
Hussein in 2003 formalized Kurdish autonomy in
northern Iraq. Turkey now accuses the Iraqi Kurds of
helping the PKK, but Kurdish officials say they have
had no contact with the rebel group since a 2000
cease-fire.
"We have nothing to do with them. They do not have
our permission to be there," said Ahmed Hussein, the
mayor of Qaladiza, the last town before the Iraqi
border post. "They don't come here, and we don't go
there."
Turkey's past failed incursions demonstrate that
military action won't work in the forbidding
terrain, said Manda, the Kurdish security official.
"These are very harsh, very high mountains, and they
cannot be controlled by the Kurdish government, nor
could they be controlled by Saddam, and they
couldn't be controlled by Turkey," he said. "They
are uncontrollable. Even America couldn't control
them."
An oasis in the harsh terrain
A visit to Mt. Qandil, where the PKK's main base in
Kurdistan (northern Iraq) is located, illustrates
the challenges inherent in taking on the rebels in
their mountain fortress, where soaring cliffs offer
natural defenses for a guerrilla army.
The first PKK checkpoint, marked by two flagpoles
flying the group's sunshine-logo flag, lies a
grueling 20-minute drive from the Iraqi post, up a
perilously twisting dirt track that winds high above
a steep gorge. Two youthful guards, dressed in olive
fatigues bound at the waist with thick Kurdish-style
sashes, peer suspiciously at visitors, then wave
them on.
At the second checkpoint, an older fighter takes
journalists' passports and assigns them an escort
wielding an AK-47 to visit the Martyrs' Shrine, an
unexpected oasis in the harsh terrain. The shrine is
planted with geraniums, peach trees and roses and
contains the graves of 67 fallen fighters, all
killed in battles with Iraqi Kurds. A lily pond
features a running fountain and jumping fish.
This is as far as visitors are permitted to go
because of the sensitivity of the situation,
according to Farhat, 30, a PKK fighter guarding the
shrine who would only give his first name.
"This is a very hot area so we are expecting an
attack at any time," he said. "That is why we're
here."
The main camp, which includes guest houses, a
restaurant and classrooms, lies farther up the
mountain; it is sustained by crops grown by the PKK
fighters and the proceeds of cross-border smuggling,
local Kurds say. They say it is not a military
command center so much as a training facility that
draws young Kurds from across the region to be
schooled in Marxist-Leninist thought, Kurdish
nationalism and how to survive in the forbidding
terrain.
Though it is safely out of reach of gunners on the
Turkish side of the border, nearly 50 miles away,
Iranian artillery is just over the mountain ridge.
The area is well within the reach of Turkish
warplanes, which launched air strikes against the
camp in 1992.
Disdain mixed with kinship
Local villagers, living among the PKK in rough-hewn
stone houses with satellite dishes perched on their
roofs, are nervous. Two days earlier, they cowered
in fear at the sound of artillery exploding in the
distance.
"They hit the mountains and killed some goats. We
were very afraid," said Fatma Hajji. "We expect the
attacks to increase."
Officials in the pro-American, pro-foreign
investment Kurdish government do not attempt to hide
their disdain for the leftist revolutionaries who
are jeopardizing their stability. The U.S., as well
as Turkey, has designated the PKK a terrorist
organization, and Kurdistan would be "more than
happy" if the PKK went away, said Pire, the PUK
official.
Yet a bond of Kurdish kinship inevitably ties the
Kurds governing their own territory to those still
fighting for an independent Kurdistan.
"The PKK represents a nation without rights just as
we used to be in the past," said Hussein, the
Qaladiza mayor and himself a former peshmerga
fighter.
"Once it was us who was fighting in those mountains,
and Mam [uncle] Jalal was our leader," he said,
using a term of endearment to refer to President
Talabani. "We suffered thousands of martyrs until we
reached the point where we are today, and now Mam
Jalal is our president.
"It's a dream come true."
chicagotribune com
** 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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