Iraqi Kurds warn Turkey

Society Pakistan & World Affairs
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It’s becomimg clear that the price that the US is prepared to pay for Turkish co-operation, is to allow a Turkish invasion and occupation of the entire North of Iraq.

Iraqi Kurds warn Turkey

The Kurds of northern Iraq have warned that there will be clashes if troops from neighbouring Turkey cross the border. Ankara is demanding that Turkish forces should enter the north of the country to secure Turkey’s interests if the US and Britain go ahead with an attack on Iraq. Kurdish spokesmen have said that their guerrillas who control the north will oppose any Turkish intervention. Regional tensions are rising in advance of expected military action by the US and its allies and the atmosphere between two of those allies - the Turks and the Iraqi Kurds - is becoming increasingly embittered.

Guerrilla warning

In the most blunt warning yet, senior officials of the two big Kurdish factions - the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and its rival, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) - have warned that if Turkish troops cross the border for any reason there will be trouble. The KDP and PUK have run affairs in an enclave in the north of Iraq since 1991. The KDP’s peshmerga guerrillas control the border regions seen as a possible route for Turkish forces. KDP spokesman Hoshyar Zebari said: "We will oppose any Turkish military intervention. This is our decision. “Nobody should [think] we are bluffing on this issue. This is a very serious matter. Any intervention, under whatever pretext, will lead to clashes.” Mr Zebari said it would be bad for the image of the Americans and British that two of their allies should be “at each other’s throats” before the main battle against the Baghdad government had even started. He also warned that if the Turks intervened, other regional powers such as Iran would also feel free to step in.

Turkish wishes

As part of the price for their own troops to spring off from Turkey, the Americans are believed to have agreed in principle to the Turkish demand for forces to be involved.

**The Turkish foreign minister has said the intervention would be to:

Head off a potential wave of refugees

Stop the Iraqi Kurds setting up an independent state

Prevent Kurdish forces from entering the nearby Iraqi oil cities of Kirkuk and Mosul**

The Kurds insist they have no intention of doing any of these things and they say that Turkish intervention would be an unnecessary violation of Iraqi sovereignty. The Turks are also said to be demanding that Kurdish guerrillas should be disarmed. The Kurdish spokesmen said they had already agreed that their forces should be dissolved and merged with the Iraqi army and police forces, but not before a democratic federal government has been established in Baghdad. The Kurds and Turks have been engaged in so far inconclusive talks over Ankara’s demands and another meeting is scheduled for Tuesday.

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The Kurds will most like be in for a pasting if they try to tangle with the Turkish army. Turkey has firepower that makes the Iraqi army look like kids with pop guns.

And Kurdistan was formerly governed by the Turks anyway.... it will be just taking back a tiny portion of what was forcibly ripped away from Turkish ownership in the aftermath of WW1.

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[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by mAd_ScIeNtIsT: *
The Kurds will most like be in for a pasting if they try to tangle with the Turkish army. Turkey has firepower that makes the Iraqi army look like kids with pop guns.

And Kurdistan was formerly governed by the Turks anyway.... it will be just taking back a tiny portion of what was forcibly ripped away from Turkish ownership in the aftermath of WW1.
[/QUOTE]

Yes, I agree and an accurate summarisation.The US is setting the precedent of "pre-emptive" military intervention to further it's own national interests, and their is no reason why others should not follow. Can the US sqaure this up with the Iraqi Kurds and the wider Iraqi people whom it has been promising democracy and liberty to?

On a wider note the former UK Prime Minister, John Major was warning not just of an "Armageddon" when war starts in Iraq, but of the impossibility of getting the majority Shia Muslim Arabs, minority Sunni Muslim Arabs and Kurds to agree to govern Iraq together.

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[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Malik73: *
Yes, I agree and an accurate summarisation.The US is setting the precedent of "pre-emptive" military intervention to further it's own national interests, and their is no reason why others should not follow.
[/QUOTE]

Exactly. If the fact that Iraq is a potential threat to the US provides sufficient justification for an invasion of Iraq to neutralise it, does the fact that the Iraqi Kurds are a potential threat to Turkish national integrity provide justification for Turket to occupy the Kurds?

And where does it go from here? Is the fact that Syria is a potential threat to Israel justification for an Israeli invasion of Syria, even if Syria undertakes no hostile act?

If North Korea were to feel that Japan is a threat to it, does that justify a North Korean invasion of Japan to remove a threat before it has the chance to materialise?

Where does pre-emption end?

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ITs just the start. US is setting a dangerous precedent.
As for the issue of Kurds and Kurdistan, well I don't think its a secret that Kurds have a long history of struggle for their independence and are among the most suppressed people in the world whether they are on the Iraqi side of the border or else Turkey. Nobody can deny the human rights violation comitted against the Kurdish people by the Turkish authorities. The possibility that the area might be given to the Turks as a war bounty doesnot augur well with the very concept of the upcoming war. THe fact that the US is liberating a nation from a mad man while on the other and handing over people conscious of their rights to another nation cannot be justified on any grounds.

And yes not to forget that the war on terorism has already diminished the line that separated the self determination movements from terrorist ones...

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Turkey’s “claims” over Northern Iraq stem not just from historical/territorial wrongs it has felt, but also to protect the large Turkmen minority in Iraqi Kurdistan, and an obvious desire to stop the Iraqi Kurds getting autonomy and their hands on the oil-rich cities of Kirkuk and Mosul.

Exiled Turkmen lay claim to oil riches

In a badly lit room in a nondescript apartment in central Istanbul about 150 men and women come this time every year to mourn their dead. Beneath what looks something similar to a Turkish flag, a man sings from the Koran to a sombre audience, some weeping, others lost in their memories. These are the Turks of northern Iraq, known as Turkmen. Many have fled from persecution by Saddam Hussein and every year they gather for mevlit, the mourning ceremony for those who died in either the Iran-Iraq war or in the struggle against Saddam. Next to the flag is a map of northern Iraq; different colours indicate different ethnic groups. A small strip of light blue at the northernmost edge of Iraq indicates Kurdish predominance. Down south is uncoloured, of no interest to the Turkmen. A broad strip is coloured yellow to indicate Turkmen predominance. Firmly within the yellow area lie Mosul and Kirkuk, one of the richest oil-producing areas in Iraq. Every room in the apartment has this map on the wall; in his office at the back of the suite the leader of the Iraqi Turks’ Association, Kemal Beyatli, has two copies framed and hanging on the walls. Any expression of interest prompts the donation of another copy.

Turkey has always spoken up for the Turkmen community in Iraq, a group most number at about 500,000 in northern Iraq but which Turkey says is three million strong. But in recent months Turkish pulses have been racing at the prospect of a change in control of the areas that the Turkmen say they dominate. Rumblings about a Turkish claim on northern Iraq started during and after the Gulf war in 1991. Since then Turkey has backtracked, sticking to the line of maintaining Iraq’s territorial integrity. But recently Turkish politicians have once again raised the issue of sovereignty. Alarm bells began to ring loud among Turkey’s neighbours when Foreign Minister Yasar Yakis announced last month that Turkey was inspecting old treaties to ‘find out whether or not we have lost our rights to this region’. Mosul and Kirkuk lie just outside the semi-autonomous region of Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq. Turkey claimed Mosul and Kirkuk for itself when it declared its borders after the collapse of the Ottoman empire in 1920. Even then the area’s oil wealth was evident. But Turkey never secured the territory. It recognised Iraqi control of the area in a treaty signed with Britain in 1926. In his office decorated with paintings, engravings and, of course, maps of Kirkuk, Kemal Beyatli is careful not to step beyond the official line of Turkish policy. He is not, despite the suffering of the Turkmen people at the hands of Saddam, in favour of war. But about Kirkuk’s origins, he is adamant: ‘The traditions of the people, the architecture, the cemeteries and the folklore prove to which nation it belongs,’ he says. ‘One can see very clearly that Kirkuk is a Turkmen region.’

All of which may come as something of a surprise to the Kurds, seen as the dominant ethnic group in the area. But it is the Kurdish presence in the region, rather than old treaties or ethnic links, that drives Turkey’s claims. It is hard to find people in Turkey who really believe that it has sovereignty over Mosul and Kirkuk. Arguments remain over whether Turkey received what it should have from oil revenues, says Hikmet Ulugbay, a former government Minister who ordered research on the issue when he was in office. But he said, ‘the 1926 agreement firmly established the borderline. There’s no question about it’. *** Turkey’s most recent claims to Kirkuk and Mosul are more about sending a warning to the Kurds and their likely allies, the US. Turkey will not allow Mosul and Kirkuk to fall into Kurdish hands***. It has fought a long and bloody war against Kurdish paramilitaries in south-east Turkey. It believes that any hint of an autonomous Kurdish state would inflame a separatist problem which it has only recently contained. ‘The real problem for Ankara,’ said Kurdish journalist Ragip Duran, ‘is the thought of an autonomous Kurdish state with access to the oil wealth of Kirkuk and Mosul, which would give it economic independence.’ If there is any hint of the oil wealth of the region falling into Kurdish hands, Turkey will not hesitate to move its army - the largest in Europe -into northern Iraq. Turkey announced this week that it was reinforcing its 2nd Army, based near the Iraqi border. The United States insists that if it fights Iraq it will not be fighting for oil; it has said that the oil of Iraq belongs to the people of Iraq. That may satisfy the great powers. But if Iraq’s central authority is destroyed those ‘people’ may once again become ‘peoples’, fighting between themselves for the oil wealth that could set them free. Warily, Turkey watches and waits.

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Iraq’s Kurds threaten Turkish troops](http://www.dailyemerald.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2003/02/24/3e5a54fb556df) Oregon Daily Emerald
February 24, 2003

IRBIL, Iraq – Rebel Kurdish leaders warned Sunday that Turkish troops will be attacked if they are allowed to enter northern Iraq in return for Turkey’s support for a U.S. invasion. “Any intervention under any pretext whatsoever will lead to clashes,” said Hoshiyar Zebari, a senior official of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, one of two parties that control the Kurd-dominated north. “Nobody should think we are bluffing on this issue.”

Zebari and Latif Rashid, a senior official with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, told reporters that their parties do not plan a confrontation. But popular anger at Turkish intervention would trigger “uncontrolled clashes,” Zebari said. The Bush administration reportedly is close to finalizing an agreement that would allow Turkish troops to enter northern Iraq as part of a deal under which U.S. troops could use Turkish bases as staging areas for an invasion. Turkey has for years been struggling to crush its own Kurdish rebel group, the Kurdish Workers Party, or PKK.

Ankara says its forces are needed to prevent the KDP and PUK from reviving a drive for independence that could re-energize the PKK. The Kurds’ comments represented the most explicit warning to date to the Bush administration and Turkey against concluding a plan for tens of thousands of Turkish troops to flow into northern Iraq behind invading U.S. forces. The dispute could seriously complicate the Kurds’ cooperation in the Pentagon’s strategy to use their Vermont-size enclave to open a northern front against Saddam Hussein, who withdrew his forces from the area in 1991.

In the longer term, U.S. forces that would occupy Iraq after ousting Saddam could become enmeshed in a bloody tussle over oil-rich territory that could trigger wider instability and erase any hope of building a stable democracy. “It will be bad for the image of the United States, Britain and other countries who want to help Iraq, to see two of their allies, Turkey and Kurdistan, at each other’s throats,” said Zebari.

He said the Kurdish officials and the Turkish military would hold talks on Tuesday. Turkey especially wants to stop the KDP and PUK from seizing the oil-rich cities of Kirkuk and Mosul as that would give the Kurds control of huge financial resources. Under an apparent compromise with the Pentagon, Turkish forces would remain under Turkish command, and could surround – but not capture – Mosul or Kirkuk. Turkish troops would also move to eradicate an estimated 5,000 PKK fighters hiding in northern Iraq.