Turkey Prepares To Welcome Talabani For "Working Visit" Not
"Official Visit"
By Gareth Jenkins
Thursday, March 6, 2008
JamesTown
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani is due to arrive in Ankara tomorrow (March 7) for
a three-day visit, with energy cooperation and the presence of the Kurdistan
Workers’ Party (PKK) in Iraqi Kurdistan expected to top the agenda. However,
Turkey has refused to classify the trip as an “official visit,” downgrading it
to a “working visit.” As a result, unlike recent visits by other heads of state,
including Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir (see EDM, January 22),
Talabani will not receive the full honors bestowed by Turkish protocol, such as
a red carpet, military guard of honor, and a 21-gun salute. Instead, he will
effectively be treated as a private guest of Turkish President Abdullah Gul (Milliyet,
Yeni Safak, March 6).
The calculated snub is partly because few Turks have forgotten Talabani’s
support for the PKK during the mid-1990s, when, as head of the Patriotic Union
of Kurdistan (PUK), he allowed the organization to use the region of Iraqi
Kurdistan controlled by the PUK as a platform for attacks into Turkey. But it
has been nearly a decade since the PKK was active in PUK-controlled territory.
The organization is now mainly based in the area under the nominal control of
the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) of Talabani’s long-time rival, Massoud
Barzani, who is currently also head of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG),
which administers the predominantly Kurdish region in Iraqi Kurdistan.
However, the main reason for Ankara’s refusal to grant Talabani’s visit official
status appears to be that it still regards him primarily as a Kurd rather than
the president of the whole of Iraq. Particularly since the 2003 U.S.-led
invasion of Iraq, Turkey has resisted engaging on an official level with any
Iraqi Kurd, regardless of their supposed support for or opposition to the PKK,
for fear that it might encourage the Iraqi Kurds to try to establish their own
independent state in the north of the country – something Turkey fears could
further fuel separatist sentiments among its own restive Kurdish minority. For
example, unlike a string of other countries, and despite being the KRG’s main
trading partner, Turkey has refused to open a consulate in Iraqi Kurdistan. Its
only diplomat presence in the region has been one diplomat dispatched from the
Turkish embassy in Baghdad and operating unofficially out of a hotel.
Perhaps more surprising has been the Turkish government’s reluctance to engage
on an official level with Talabani, who, as president of all of Iraq, represents
the unitary state that Ankara is committed to preserving.
“Even though he is coming to Ankara as president of Iraq, Turkey still treats
him as the head of the PUK,” noted journalist Rusen Cakir in the daily Vatan
(March 6).
In an interview on the NTV news channel, Government Spokesman Cemil Cicek
implicitly acknowledged that the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP)
still regarded Talabani as being primarily a representative of the Iraqi Kurds
rather than the Iraqi state.
“We will remain in contact with different segments of the Iraqi population, in
the north, the center, and the south,” said Cicek (NTV, March 5).
Cicek predicted that Talabani’s discussions with Gul were expected to be
dominated by the possible cooperation against the PKK and on energy issues,
including the possible export of Iraqi natural gas to international markets via
Turkey and Turkish companies being granted oil exploration licenses in Iraq.
“The terrorism problem should not prevent us from cooperating in other areas,”
said Cicek (NTV, March 5).
Writing in the liberal daily Radikal, columnist Murat Yetkin called on President
Gul to respond to Talabani’s visit by paying a visit of his own to Baghdad.
Yetkin noted that Turkey’s reluctance to engage with Talabani has meant that he
has already visited Iran three times and that Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad has visited Baghdad, even though it meant accepting security from
the U.S.-led coalition forces (Radikal, March 6).
The daily Milliyet reported that Iraqi Kurdish officials requested that Talabani
be allowed to pay his respects at the Anitkabir, the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal
Ataturk (1881-1938), the founder of the modern Turkish republic who ruthlessly
suppressed a series of Kurdish revolts inside Turkey in the 1920s and 1930s (Milliyet,
March 6). But, even though Talabani is prepared to overlook the past, the future
will still cast a long shadow over his visit.
Turkey’s continuing reluctance to engage with a Kurd in his capacity as Iraqi
president suggests that it is unlikely to reverse its ongoing refusal to engage
on an official level with the KRG. Yet not only the PKK but a large proportion
of Iraq’s energy resources are located in territory under the KRG’s de facto
control. In the aftermath of its eight-day incursion into Iraqi Kurdistan to
strike at bases belonging to the PKK (see EDM, February 29, March 3), the
Turkish military admitted that such operations were unlikely to eradicate the
organization and called on the Turkish government to address the socio-economic
conditions in southeast Turkey that are fuelling support for the PKK. Even if
they are introduced, such measures will take time to bear fruit. In the medium
term, it is only through the cooperation of the KRG that the PKK presence in
Iraqi Kurdistan will be eradicated. Yet such cooperation is unlikely unless
Turkey engages with the KRG. Yet there is still no sign that either the Turkish
military or the civilian government is prepared to set aside its fears of the
future emergence of an independent Kurdish state and engage directly with the
KRG.
