WASHINGTON, Jan. 10 (UPI) -- Turkey's president made it clear during his visit
to Washington this week that his country will continue a hard-line approach in
dealing with the Kurdish guerrilla campaign in his country and ensuring Kirkuk,
Iraq's oil-rich northern city, doesn't fall under control of Iraq's Kurds.
After meetings with top officials, including President Bush, President Abdullah
Gul exposed the fault line between U.S.-Turkey and U.S.-Kurd relations.
"Turkey and United States are partners in Iraq," he said Tuesday during a speech
at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. "Needless to say, we
both have great stake in Iraq's security and stability and welfare."
Turkey says the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, based in the hard-to-reach
northern Iraq mountains, crosses the border north to carry out its violent
strategy of Turkish Kurd autonomy. Turkey said U.S., Iraqi and Iraqi Kurdish
leaders have not done enough to prevent attacks.
The future of Kirkuk, 180 miles north of Baghdad, is a struggle two decades in
the making. Gul called it "a powder keg" that could enflame the region if the
"international community fails."
After raising the issue with Bush, Gul met with U.N. Security-General Ban Ki-moon
and pressed for the United Nations to take an active role in solving the Kirkuk
issue.
Bulent Aliriza, director of the Center for Strategic & International Studies'
Turkey Project, said Turkey basically holds a three-point position on keeping
Kirkuk from the KRG: "the city and the oil resources around it belong equally to
Turkomen, Arabs and Kurds who live there; its incorporation by the Kurds would
provide the economic underpinning of an independent Kurdish state, which Turkey
opposes; and it's contrary to the vital interest of the Turkomen who are
ethnically related to the Turks."
Kirkuk is the capital of Iraq's northern oil sector, with adjacent oil fields
holding up to an estimated 15 billion of Iraq's 115 billion barrels of proven
oil reserves and the start of a pipeline feeding Iraq's largest oil refinery as
well as sending oil exports to market when it juts north into Turkey.
Kurds, Turkomen, Arabs and others composed its population in the 1980s when
Saddam Hussein forcibly moved Arabs in and others out and redrew the provincial
boundaries to put the oil-rich lands out of majority Kurdish provinces.
Iraq's Kurdish leadership ensured the 2005 Constitution contained language,
however vague, to reverse Hussein's brutal move. Kurds, Turkomen and others were
to be resettled back in Kirkuk (and other disputed territories touched by the
late dictator). Arabs brought in were to be brought out.
Then a census was to be taken to determine eligible voters in "a referendum in
Kirkuk and other disputed territories to determine the will of their citizens,"
according to a translation of the Constitution posted on the U.S. Commerce
Department's Iraq Investment and Reconstruction Task Force Web site, "by a date
not to exceed the 31st of December 2007."
A week before that deadline, the top U.N. envoy to Iraq, Staffan de Mistura, and
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met in Kirkuk to negotiate a six-month
timeline to work out a solution. Iraq's Kurds, intent and passionate about a
referendum where residents could choose to join the disputed territories -- and
its oil -- to the semiautonomous Kurdistan Regional Government, reluctantly
agreed. They've been vocal in their critique of the national government for not
putting enough effort into complying with the constitution's Kirkuk agenda and
are ardently opposed to anything but the referendum in six months at the latest.
"As the primary Turkish goal is to prevent the incorporation of the city into
the territory controlled by the Iraqi Kurds, they are happy with the
postponement of the referendum and would not mind an indefinite postponement"
Aliriza said. "It's as simple as that."
However, he said they were now pressing for a U.N.-negotiated "special status"
for Kirkuk, like a region unto itself.
"The U.S. government is taking the Turkish position seriously," Aliriza said,
"and this was a major factor in the U.S. decision to punt by getting a six-month
delay."
"Clearly the U.S. has taken some hits from the Iraqi Kurds on the bombing of PKK
targets," Aliriza said when asked what the U.S.-Turkish warming means for
U.S.-Kurd relations.
"Whether the relationship suffers further we'll see," he said, adding the United
States will be forced to take sides if Turkey escalates its effort to "finish
the PKK" at the end of the six months.
Top Kurdish leader and KRG President Massoud Barzani canceled a meeting with
Rice during her brief Kirkuk visit. Turkey had just bombed and invaded northern
Iraq using U.S. intelligence, promised by Bush in November when Turkish Prime
Minister Recep Erdogan was visiting.
Iraq's government, while calling the PKK terrorists, has also called on
Turkey to work on improving the human rights of Kurds in Turkish-occupied
Kurdistan. Iraq's Kurds have also said there is no proof attacks in Turkey were
planned in or carried out by anyone based in Iraq.
A senior administration official said Bush and Erdogan didn't get specific in
Kirkuk talks. For the PKK, Bush said support would continue, though he urged
Ankara to talk with Iraq and Iraqi Kurds.
"We have (U.S.) cooperation," Gul said, "at the moment."
