Barzani Meets PUK Delegation, Agreement on Electricity Issue

The Washinton Post

July 17, 2002

ISTANBUL, July 17 – After twice postponing trips to Turkey, an ally crucial to any U.S. military action being planned against neighboring Iraq, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz arrived this week just in time to see a teetering Turkish government collapse.

Yet analysts agree that whatever government emerges from Nov. 3 elections, it will almost certainly repeat the consensus view Wolfowitz heard again and again from Turks here and in Ankara, the capital: Turkey may well provide the support expected of a strategic ally, including permission to base U.S. troops on Iraq's northern border.

But do not mistake cooperation for endorsement, Turks warn. The country remains deeply skeptical not only of a U.S. military campaign against Iraq, but also of what might follow it.

"Suppose you have eliminated Saddam. How will you replace him?" said Ilter Turkmen, a former foreign minister. "Are they going to establish democracy in Iraq?

"There are serious concerns about Iraq."

Wolfowitz addressed Turkey's most fundamental concerns head-on in his three-day visit, billed as a listening rather than negotiating effort. In a speech delivered only hours after landing in Istanbul, the country's scenic commercial capital, the second-ranking defense official emphasized that the United States does not want a new war to loose ethnic Kurds in Iraq to unite with those in Turkey to create a new nation.

"Turkey reasonably wishes to be assured that events in Iraq won't have a negative impact on its own unity," Wolfowitz said.

He also asserted that the United States would find "unacceptable" a Kurdish state even on land confined to northern Iraq, where under cover of U.S. air patrols the Kurdish population has enjoyed a large measure of autonomy since the 1991 Gulf War.

"Fortunately," Wolfowitz said, "the Kurds of northern Iraq increasingly seem to understand this fact and understand the importance of thinking of themselves as Iraqis who will participate fully in the political life of a future democratic Iraq."

The assurances were welcomed in Turkey, where the central government has fought an intermittent war against Kurdish separatists. But analysts wryly noted their guest's assurances were necessary in the first place: The unintended consequences that followed the last U.S. war against Iraq.

"One of the unpredicted results of the Gulf War was the creating of a Kurdish – call it what you want – 'entity' in northern Iraq," said Sami Kohen, a senior columnist in Istanbul. He noted that visitors arriving by road in northern Iraq are greeted by a sign reading "Welcome to Kurdistan."

"This is very worrying for the Turks," he said.

Turkey also warned that the oil rich areas of Mosul and Kirkuk in northern Iraq should not be put under the control of Iraqi Kurds. The areas are just outside the autonomous Kurdish zone.