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The Kirkuk-Ankara balance
16.1.2008
By Dorian Jones
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As Turkey launches limited cross-border strikes
against PKK bases in northern Iraq and Iraqi-Kurdish
leaders warn against Ankara’s interference, the US
walks a political tightrope in appeasing its two
allies.
January 16 2008
Tens of thousands of Turkish soldiers, backed by
tanks and helicopter gunships remain poised on the
Iraqi border, as Ankara threatens to enter Iraq to
wipe out bases of the Turkey's Kurdish workers
party, the PKK.
The PKK has been fighting the Turkish government for
23 years for an autonomous Kurdish state. Ankara
accuses the PKK of using the Iraqi
Kurdish-controlled enclave as a base to launch
attacks against it. But the massive show of Turkish
military strength is part of a wider agenda.
“The PKK is only one aspect of it, the other aspect
of it is the nature of the Kurdish entity in
Northern Iraq and the defiance of [Massoud] Barzani
[President of the Iraqi Kurdish regional government,
KRG] and most importantly the issue of Kirkuk,” Soli
Ozel, international relations expert at Istanbul’s
Bilgi University, told ISN Security Watch.
The Iraqi city of Kirkuk and the surrounding region
have some of the world’s largest oil reserves. Under
article 140 of Iraq’s constitution a referendum must
be held on whether the city secedes to control of
the KRG.
Kirkuk’s population is made up of Arabs, Turkomens
(ethnic Turks) and Kurds. And many analysts predict
that any referendum would be in favor of succession,
given the city’s large Kurdish population. In 2005,
a local Kurdish party won the city’s municipal
elections.
But the prospect of Kirkuk’s succession to the Iraqi
Kurds is seen by many in Turkey as a threat.
“Linking the oil-rich Kirkuk to northern Iraq [Iraqi
Kurdistan] after a popular vote will create an
enormous financial resource for Kurds on the way to
independence,” commentator Cuneyt Ulsever wrote in
the Turkish Daily News in late December.
The prospect of an independent Iraqi Kurdish state
on Turkey’s border is seen by many Turkish political
and military leaders as the greatest danger facing
the country today.
“The aim of the Kurdish people is to create a
greater Kurdistan - and a greater Kurdistan
territory covers some Turkish territory, some Iran
territory and some Syrian territory. It will be
danger to Turkey, Iran and Syria,” General (retired)
Armagan Kuloglu head of Strategi a geo-political
think tank, told ISN Security Watch.
The perceived threat is probably the only issue
Turkey’s staunchly secular army and the country’s
ruling Islamic orientated Justice and Development
Party (AKP) agree on.
“A solution to the Kirkuk problem on the basis of
all ethnic and religious factions will be the
primary objective,” according to a 40-page AKP road
map outlining government priorities published on 11
January.
For his part, Barzani, the president of the KRG, has
repeatedly given assurances that he has no plans to
declare independence, although his Kurdish
Democratic Party (KDP) refuses to rule it out in
principle.
“Dependency is the right of every nation, as well as
the Kurds. But the Kurdish politicians have been
wise enough to deal with the situation according to
the reality surrounding them.www.ekurd.net
If and when the time is
there for the Kurds to be independent, I don’t think
the Kurdish leaders can stand against it. If you ask
any Kurd on the street if you want to be
independent, the answer without any hesitation will
say yes,” KRG government spokesman Safeen Dizayee
said in a December statement.
This ambiguity lies at the heart of the deep
mistrust between Ankara and the KRG.
Ankara is lobbying Washington relentlessly to
indefinitely postpone the Kirkuk referendum and to
see that the city is granted a special status
ostensibly to protect its ethnic Turkish population.
That lobbying has achieved some success: In
December, the referendum was postponed and
rescheduled to the middle of this year, officially
due to security concerns.
Turkey stepped up its diplomatic offensive with
newly elected Turkish President Abdullah Gul
pressing the issue when he met with US President
George W Bush on 8 January. A top member of Turkey’s
US delegation was quoted in the Turkish media as
claiming that Ankara now has Washington’s ear: “We
could say they share our concerns […] they see that
a referendum in Kirkuk will turn Iraq upside down,”
the Turkish daily Milliyet reported on 9 January.
Kirkuk, the Kurd’s historical capital
But Kirkuk is viewed by many Kurds as their
historical capital. The legendary leader of Kurdish
nationalism, Mullah Mustafa Barzani,www.ekurd.net
devoted his life to
achieving that goal.
In 1974, a deal between Barzani and Saddam Hussein
that would have given Iraqi Kurds autonomy broke
down over the issue of control of the city. Today,
his son Masoud Barzani has taken up his father’s
mantle as the leader of the KRG.
Barzani has made the Kirkuk referendum a priority,
and has warned Ankara not to interfere.
“Turkey must not intervene in the Kirkuk issue, and
if it does, we will interfere in Diyarbakir and
other cities in Turkey, where Kurds live. I do not
fear their military power. No matter how strong
their military power might be,” Barzani said in an
April 2007 interview with Al-Arabiyah television.
That threat caused outrage in Turkey, with Turkish
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan referring to
Barzani as a “tribal leader” who would be “forced to
choke on his words.”
The controversy fueled Ankara’s suspicion that
Barzani was indirectly if not directly supporting
the PKK as a means to put pressure on Turkey to stay
out of Kirkuk. Ankara has frequently accused the KRG
of failing to curtail PKK activities in their
territory - a charge the KRG strongly denies.
Here it is important to remember that in the 1990s
it was with the help of Iraq’s Kurds that Turkey was
able to fight back the PKK. The Iraqi Kurds were
rewarded for their assistance, and indeed,www.ekurd.net
at the close of the Gulf
War in 1991, it was the US and Turkey who set up a
safe area for Iraqi Kurds in northern Iraq. But
today, it seems that the Iraqi Kurds no longer need
Turkey’s help, and as such have changed their tune.
A delicate balancing act
In the meantime, both sides see the US as the key to
determining Kirkuk’s fate.
Washington is walking a political tight rope,
attempting to balance the conflicting demands of
Turks and Iraqi Kurds, both key allies it cannot
afford to lose.
Iraqi Kurds are among Washington’s closest allies in
Iraq, with coalition forces depending heavily on the
Peshmergas (Iraqi Kurdish soldiers). But with Turkey
heeding Washington’s call not to enter Iraq to
remove PKK bases, it appears to be now leaning
towards Turkey.
On 14 January, Turkish aircraft bombed targets in
northern Iraq, hitting PKK positions in the
Avasin-Basyan and Hakurk regions, according to a
military statement. The strike was the fourth
confirmed since 16 December last year.
The US has recently agreed to provide Turkey with
intelligence on PKK movements, in an apparent move
to appease Ankara by turning a blind eye to these
occasional cross-border strikes, which allow the
Turkish government to appease its own public, and in
the meantime, prevent a full-scale Turkish invasion
of northern Iraq.
But waiting in the wings is Iran, who are working
hard to build ties with Iraqi Kurds, according to a
foreign intelligence source in Iraq.
Trade between the Iraqi Kurdish enclave and Iran has
steadily increased, a Turkish businessman told ISN
Security Watch. “You see Iranian traders and
businessmen more and more.”
The US has repeatedly accused Iranian intelligence
of using the growing trade as a cover to operate in
the Iraqi Kurdish enclave. In January 2007, US
special forces seized five Iranian members of a
trade delegation in Irbil, the Kurdish regional
capital, accusing them of being intelligence
officers of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. The KRG
disputed the accusation and angrily protested the
abductions.
While Tehran is fighting its own Kurdish insurgency,
traditionally it has enjoyed good relations with the
Iraqi Kurds. But for now the KRG appears to still
see its interests in maintaining close ties with the
US.
Still, the region is historically infamous for
shifting alliances. Massoud Barzani in 1996 turned
his back on Washington and joined forces with the
then-Iraqi president Saddam Hussein to defeat his
Kurdish rival Jalal Talabani, who is now Iraq
president. That resulted in the collapse of a major
US covert operation to overthrow the Iraqi
president. And Iraqi Kurds still remember how
Washington left them to the mercy of Iraqi forces
after the first Gulf War in 1991.
Settling the future of Kirkuk appears to have become
a zero sum game between Ankara and Erbil. The
challenge facing Washington is how to balance these
conflicting demands without alienating either party.
Dorian L Jones is an Istanbul-based correspondent
reporting for ISN Security Watch. He has covered
events in Northern Iraq, Turkey and Cyprus. He is
also a radio documentary producer.
speroforum com | isn ethz.ch
Kirkuk city is a
Kurdish city
and it lies just south border of the Kurdistan
autonomous region, the population is a mix of
majority Kurds and minority of Arabs, Christians and
Turkmen. lies 250 km northeast of Baghdad.
The former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein forced
over 250,000 Kurdish residents to give up their
homes to Arabs in the 1970s, to "Arabize" the city
and the region's oil industry.
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