Kurdish Parliament Criticize Turkey Over Its
Threats Against Kurdistan Region
The Associated Press
January 24, 2007
Arbil (Southern Kurdistan)
The regional parliament in Iraq's semiautonomous Kurdish area held an
extraordinary meeting Wednesday and discussed Turkish threats against it saying
that such language does not scare Kurds.
The meeting came a day after Turkey's main opposition party increased pressure
on the government to send soldiers to Iraq as parliament went into a closed-door
session to debate the country's policy on Iraq and to find ways to fight
separatist Kurdish guerrillas based there.
"Kurdistan's parliament reject any interference by neighboring countries in our
affairs," said parliament speaker, Adnan al-Mufti. "If Turkey's intentions
toward Iraq were peaceful then why do they hold closed-door meetings despite
that we are in the time of openness."
Turkey has expressed dissatisfaction with U.S. and Iraqi efforts to contain
Turkish Kurdish guerrillas, who Ankara says have been using bases in Iraq to
fight for autonomy in Turkey's southeast. Opposition parties have been trying to
get the government to consider possible military action or economic embargoes to
force Iraqi Kurds to cooperate with Turkey.
On Monday, Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said the government had
banned activities by opposition Iranian and anti-Turkish Kurdish groups and said
it rejected conferences that had been hosted by
Turkey that were viewed as interfering in Iraq's domestic affairs.
Another source of tension between Turkey and Iraqi Kurds is the fate of the
oil-rich Iraqi city of Kirkuk that many Kurds hope to take control over and
annex to their region in northern Iraq.
Last week, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned Iraqi Kurdish
groups against trying to seize control of the city 290 kilometers (180 miles)
north of Baghdad, saying Turkey will not stand by amid growing tensions among
ethnic Turkomens, Arabs and Kurds in Iraq's oil-rich north.
Nechervan Barzani, the prime minister of the regional government, said "the
Turkish threats will not scare us. The era of threats has ended and we were
never a factor of threat for regional states." He added that had the Kurds
wanted to take Kirkuk by force they would have done it after the fall of Saddam
Hussein's regime.
"If Turkey wants to solve the problems by threats then it will be the main
loser," Barzani said after the parliament meeting.
The Turkish government has agreed to put the
country's Iraq policy up for discussion in the 550-member parliament, but
details of the discussion are not to be made public.
The United States has cautioned Turkey against any unilateral military action,
fearing that such intervention could destabilize northern Iraq, the most stable
part of the country.
