Turkish Officials Wary Of Independent Iraqi Kurdistan Despite Economic Gains
By Erin Banco
on June 23 2014 3:23 PM
ISTANBUL, Turkey — As Kurds inside Iraq exploit the chaos gripping the country to press for the establishment of an independent state,
one key player is casting a wary glance at this development: the Turkish government, which has for decades used force to suppress a Kurdish independence movement in southeastern Turkey.
For the Turks, the prospect that an independent Iraqi Kurdistan might now be taking shape in northern Iraq, one financed by lucrative oil installations in the area of Kirkuk, raises the risk that Kurds on both sides of the border could unite, threatening Turkey's hold on a large portion of its territory.
For years, the Turkish government has opposed Kurdish ambitions both in Iraq and at home. Since the early 1990s, Kurdish people living in southeastern Turkey have struggled, sometime violently, for independence from the central government.
“Turkey would be strongly opposed to an Iraqi Kurdistan,” said Cenap Çakmak, an international relations expert at Eskişehir Osmangazi University's department of international relations
. “The things that are going on in Iraq are working in favor of the Kurdish government. The Kurds are consolidating power and expanding the sphere of influence in the area and now they have better reason to raise the ambition of becoming independent. The Kurdish in Turkey have similar ambitions. It is a major threat to national security and national identity.”
If the Kurds in Iraq were to declare independence, he added, Kurdish communities in Turkey would “be inclined to be part of that country."
Osman Bahadir Dincer, a researcher from the International Strategic Research Organization in Istanbul, described such a scenario as one that would cause “chaos” in Turkish society.
“We have been suffering from the PKK problem almost 30 years,” he said referring to the clashes between the Turkish military and the Kurdish rebel group in the 1990s. “These people were responsible for killing thousands of people. And now they are talking about asking for autonomy.”
On the other hand, some experts in Turkey portray the emergence of an independent Iraqi Kurdistan as a potentially enormous economic opportunity. Instead of an amalgam of competing forces ruling northern Iraq and its vast oil stocks, the Kurds and their disciplined army would be in charge, fostering stability that would enable greater trade with Turkey.
“I think Kurds are one of the winners of the situation in Iraq because they are extending their territory. They have taken the Kirkuk without any struggle,” Dincer said. Kirkuk, formerly under the control of the Iraqi military, is now in the hands of the Kurdish military, or the peshmerga. It is home to one of the country’s largest crude oil hubs.
Turkey and the governing parties in Iraqi Kurdistan signed a 50-year energy deal earlier this month that will allow Kurdistan to export oil, most of it from Kirkuk, to the rest of the world via a pipeline that runs through Turkey to the Mediterranean.
Some Turkish politicians have portrayed an independent Kurdish state in Iraq as an expression of popular sentiment, one that ought to be respected. In an interview with Rudaw, a Kurdish media outlet, Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) spokesman Huseyin Celik said Ankara would support secession by Iraqi Kurds.
“The Kurds of Iraq can decide where to live and under what title they want to live. Turkey does not decide for them,” he said, according to a transcript of the interview. “If Iraq could not solve its internal problems and the practical division of Iraq that we mentioned earlier, and this became an official division, then the people living there would have the right to self-determination like other nations.”
Others have suggested that Turkey could benefit from a Kurdish state in Iraq simply by having a buffer between its territory and the violence playing out to the south, as Sunni militants associated with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria square off with Shiite militias allied with Iraq's central government, led by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
In an opinion column in Monday’s New York Times, Mustafa Akyol, a prominent Turkish journalist, described Iraqi Kurdistan as Turkey’s best ally in the Middle East.
“Apparently, Turkey is now willing to welcome Iraqi Kurds, perhaps even Syrian ones, as allies and to serve as a buffer between Turkey and the chaos in both of those countries. This could prove a very wise strategy,” he wrote.
For now, though, talk of a Kurdish state in what is now northern Iraq sows uneasiness among Turkey's ruling class, raising the spectre of a return to the bloody battles between Turkish forces and Kurds that played out during much of the 1990s.
But analysts here said Turkish officials, at least publicly, are divided on the issue, which is likely to become even more contentious as the August election approaches.
“Now we have a very polarized society; it is getting more complicated for Turkish policy-makers,” Dincer said. “Turkish politics is a mess right now.”
Turkish Officials Wary Of Independent Iraqi Kurdistan Despite Economic Gains
-----------------------
Kurdish leader cites 'new reality' in Iraq
- LARA JAKES, AP National Security Writer
- Posted June 24, 2014 at 6:27 a.m.
IRBIL, Iraq — The president of Iraq's ethnic Kurdish region declared Tuesday that "we are facing a new reality and a new Iraq" as the country considers new leadership for its Shiite-led government as an immediate step to curb a Sunni insurgent rampage.
The comments by Kurdish President Massoud Barzani came as he met with visiting U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who is pushing the central government in Baghdad to at least adopt new policies that would give more authority to Iraq's minority Sunnis and Kurds.
Kerry has repeatedly said that it's up to Iraqis — not the U.S. or other nations — to select their leaders. But he also has noted bitterness and growing impatience among all of Iraq's major sects and ethnic groups with the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
Barzani told Kerry that Kurds are seeking "a solution for the crisis that we have witnessed."
Kerry said at the start of an hour-long private meeting that the Kurdish security forces known as peshmerga have been "really critical" in helping restrain the advance of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, a Sunni insurgency that has overtaken several key areas in Iraq's west and north, and is pushing the country toward civil war.
"This is a very critical time for Iraq, and the government formation challenge is the central challenge that we face," Kerry said. He said Iraqi leaders must "produce the broad-based, inclusive government that all the Iraqis I have talked to are demanding."
The U.S. believes a new power-sharing agreement in Baghdad would soothe anger directed at the majority Shiite government that has fueled ISIL. Iraq's population is about 60 percent Shiite Muslim, whose leaders rose to power with U.S. help after the 2003 fall of former president Saddam Hussein, a Sunni.
Minority Sunnis who enjoyed far more authority and privilege under Saddam than any other sect have long been bitter about the Shiite-led government. And al-Maliki has been personally accused of targeting Sunni leaders whom he considers his political opponents.
Iraqi Kurds had no love for Saddam, and were allowed to carve out a semi-autonomous region in Iraq's north to protect themselves from his policies. But Barzani for years has feuded with al-Maliki, most recently over the Kurdish regional government's decision to export oil through Turkey without giving Baghdad its required share of the profits.
The Kurdish region is home to several vast oil fields, which have reaped security and economic stability unmatched across the rest of the Iraq.
Barzani's support is key to solving the current political crisis, because Kurds represent about 20 percent of Iraq's population and usually vote as a unified bloc. That has made Kurds kingmakers in Iraq's national political process.
Tuesday's meeting in Irbil, the Kurdish capital, came a day after Kerry traveled to Baghdad to discuss potential options with Sunni and Shiite leaders, including al-Maliki. Kerry said after the Baghdad meetings that all the leaders agreed to start the process of seating a new government by July 1, which will advance a constitutionally-required timetable for distributing power among Iraq's political blocs, which are divided by sect and ethnicity.
Once a stable government is in place, officials hope Iraqi security forces will be inspired to fight the insurgency instead of fleeing, as they did in several major cities and towns in Sunni-dominated areas since the start of the year.
U.S. special forces have been ordered to Baghdad to train and advise Iraqi counterterror soldiers. President Barack Obama is reluctantly sending American military might back to the war zone it left in 2011 after more than eight years of fighting.
Al-Maliki has for months requested U.S. military help to quell ISIL, and the Obama administration has said it must respond to the insurgent threat before it spreads beyond Iraq's borders and puts the West at risk of attack.
On Monday, Kerry said the U.S. is prepared to strike the militants even if Baghdad delays political reforms. After Tuesday's meeting with Barzani, Kerry departed for Brussels, where he and NATO foreign ministers will turn their focus to Ukraine and Afghanistan.
Early Tuesday, Iraqi authorities discovered the bodies of three men who were shot in the head and chest and had their hands and legs bound, a police officer said. The men, dressed in civilian clothes and believed to be their 30s, had been dumped in the streets of three Shiite neighborhoods in and around Baghdad.
A medical official confirmed the report. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to release information.
The appearance of dead bodies in the streets is a grim reminder of sectarian violence that peaked in 2006 and 2007. During the worst of the bloodshed, Baghdad residents woke virtually every morning to find corpses, bearing gunshot wounds and signs of torture, that had been dumped in the streets or left floating in the Tigris River.
Kurdish leader cites 'new reality' in Iraq » Anderson Independent Mail