KurdistanObserver.com

Dec 31, 2005

By Pam O'Toole
BBC News

In early December, a private Turkish commercial airline, Fly Air, quietly began direct flights to Irbil, the regional capital of Iraq's Kurds.

It is not the first foreign carrier to fly directly to the region - a number of other airlines have already launched direct services to Kurdish areas of Northern Iraq from Europe and the Middle East.

But, in the case of Turkey, it also reflects a rapidly changing relationship with Iraq's Kurds, fuelled by expanding trade ties.

Irbil is currently an economic boomtown.

There are plans for new ministry and university buildings, a huge new airport terminal, housing projects and a massive luxury development called Dream City, complete with villas, swimming pools, shopping and entertainment complexes.

Turkish ties

Douglas Layton, Irbil director of the Kurdistan Development Corporation, says "billions and billions of dollars" of work needs to be done.

The region's relative safety is drawing in foreign businesses interested in relocating from other, less secure, areas of Iraq.

Much of this construction work is being done by Turkish firms. Ilnur Cevik, president of the Turkish construction firm told me his company has secured about a quarter of the estimated $800m worth of contracts awarded to Turkish contractors in the region.

"We are exporting so many of our products here," he said. "Not only for construction, but trading. Everything you see here is Turkish-labelled.

"So I think if Turkey can overcome some of its mental blocks and start getting more involved in this region, the area will be completely linked to Turkey in many senses. And that will be very healthy for them - and for us."

'Soured relations'

When he speaks of "mental blocks" one of the things he means is Ankara's long-running concern about the effect the virtually autonomous Iraqi Kurdish region might have on the aspirations of its own restive Kurds.

There is also the fact that members of Turkey's own armed Kurdish rebel group, the PKK, are still hiding out in northern Iraq.

Those two issues have soured relations between Ankara and the Iraqi Kurdish region since the West established a safe haven for the Kurds in northern Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War. During the 1990s, Turkey regularly sent troops across the border in pursuit of the PKK.

In recent years, it has threatened military intervention if the Kurds tried to declare independence, or annexe the ethnically mixed, oil-rich city of Kirkuk into their region.

But recently, such threats have become less frequent and the long-running distrust between Turkey and Iraq's Kurds is finally starting to dissolve.

Strengthened neighbour

That is partly because of political realities on the ground. Over the past year, the Kurds have become a force to be reckoned within the Baghdad government and the autonomy of their region - now known as Iraqi Kurdistan - is enshrined in the constitution.

However, analysts believe that the massive trade between the two is also playing a major part in improving diplomatic relations. Nevertheless, Turkey continues to watch the region closely.

Hamit Bozarslan, a Paris-based Turkish-Kurdish academic, says he suspects that Ankara was quite uneasy.

"Turkey knows that without trans-border commerce and activity, the Kurdish region in Turkey will be in a very poor shape and that would produce more violence," he says.

"At the same time, Turkey knows that it is not only goods which are being transported - there are also ideas, models and images."

Kurds from Turkey's relatively impoverished south east are among those crossing into northern Iraq in search of work.

Some analysts say the increased contact between Iraq's Kurds and Kurds from neighbouring countries, like Turkey, Iran and Syria, are causing a renaissance in Kurdish culture and could be stoking dreams of a wider Kurdish state in the future.

Mustafa, a Turkish Kurd currently working in Irbil, told me he considered northern Iraq to be "a dream country" for all Kurds who wanted to live free lives in a free nation.

Iraqi Kurdish leaders have tried to allay the fears of their neighbours, saying repeatedly that they have no plans to secede from Iraq or meddle in neighbouring states' affairs.

Adnan Mufti, speaker of the Kurds' regional parliament, pointed out that the Iraqi Kurds had to co-exist peacefully in the region with Arabs, Turks and Iranians.

However, he added, "We need them to accept us like were are, not like they want us to be. We are Kurds, we will stay in Kurdistan. But we have the right to ask for our rights and they must accept that."