Kurdistan Observer

ISTANBUL, Sept. 26 -- Turkey's prime minister has issued a warning to Iraqi Kurdish groups who this week approved a constitution that envisions replacing the dictatorship of President Saddam Hussein with a "federal Iraq." The prospect alarms Turkish leaders, who fear a U.S. military campaign in Iraq will unleash ethnic Kurds' ambitions to create an independent state.

"Even though they say, 'We are against founding a Kurdish state,' a de facto state is already on the way to being formed," Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit complained Wednesday night, hours after the draft constitution was approved. "If this becomes official, there will be serious problems."

Iraqi Kurdish officials said Ecevit overreacted to what they characterized as a tentative move in an open process intended to avoid chaos in the aftermath of Hussein's ouster. The constitution, agreed to by the two rival Kurdish political parties that have controlled an autonomous section of northern Iraq since 1991, still must be submitted to other Iraqi opposition groups that the United States is trying to mobilize against Hussein.

The flap pointed up the fragile nature of the coalition the Bush administration aims to bring together as part of its effort to remove a despot it accuses of producing chemical and biological weapons. In recent weeks, Turkish officials have obliquely threatened to send troops into northern Iraq to thwart Kurdish ambitions there; a Kurdish leader replied that northern Iraq would then become a "graveyard" for Turkish troops.

Administration officials say no decision has been made on what action to take against Hussein, and U.N. Security Council members are mulling proposals that might sanction the use of force.

Turkey, as a longtime strategic U.S. ally that borders northern Iraq, would be a crucial base for U.S. ground troops and warplanes in almost any military scenario in the region. But its leadership is wary of the Iraqi Kurds, whom the Pentagon is preparing to train to work alongside U.S. forces inside Iraq. Turkey, which is home to 13 million ethnic Kurds, has spent much of the last two decades fighting Turkish Kurd separatists.

The draft constitution, which calls for a "federated zone" encompassing Kurdish areas inside Iraq, was viewed by Turkish officials as an expression of Kurdish ambitions for full independence, an outcome Turkey has repeatedly said it would counter with the use of troops.

"It only becomes official when all Iraqi people make it official," said Safeen Dizayee of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), which approved the document along with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). "Until such a day, I don't think there's any need for rhetoric from any side."

Especially touchy was the proposed selection of the oil-rich Iraqi city of Kirkuk as capital of the Kurdish zone. Analysts say Kirkuk's petroleum wealth would be essential to Kurdish independence, and for historical reasons Kurds regard the city as "sacred," said the leader of the PUK, Jalal Talabani.

But Kirkuk was also part of the Ottoman Empire from which modern Turkey emerged after World War I, and ultra-nationalists in Turkey continue to claim the area as historically Turkish. Under pressure from Turkey, the Bush administration recently invited members of Iraq's Turkish-speaking minority, known as Turkmens, to join the ranks of U.S.-sponsored opposition.

Turkey already has about 5,000 troops inside Iraq, purportedly to chase Turkish Kurd separatists who have sought refuge there. But some in Turkey's establishment have called for more ambitious military moves.

Defense Minister Sabahattin Cakmakoglu, a member of an ultra-nationalist party in Ecevit's coalition government, recently reminded reporters that northern Iraq was "forcibly separated" from Turkey in the 1920s. "Turkey considers northern Iraq to be under its direct care," he said.

In the aftermath of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Turgut Ozal, then the Turkish president, pressed the military to capture Kirkuk and Mosul, another northern Iraqi city once considered part of Turkey, according to a recent book by Necip Torumtay, who was chief of the general staff at the time.

"It was a very tempting idea," said Sadi Erguven, another retired general, who said he never heard Ozal call aloud for a Turkish invasion. "But the Turkish army has never been tasked to such a thing in the past, and I don't think it will be in the future."

Another former general, Armagan Kuloglu of the Center for Eurasian Strategic Studies in Ankara, the Turkish capital, said he has lobbied the current general staff to amend its contingency plans for northern Iraq. Rather than deploying, as now planned, only 40 or 50 miles into the country to stanch the kind of massive refugee flow into Turkey that followed the Gulf War, Kuloglu has proposed moving troops 200 miles into Iraq to hold Mosul and Kirkuk until the situation has "stabilized."

The leader of the KDP, Massoud Barzani, vowed this month, however, that northern Iraq would become a "graveyard" for advancing Turkish soldiers. Under U.S. pressure, delegations from the KDP and Ankara have tried to mend fences and avoid communicating through headlines, an effort that appeared to flag with Ecevit's sharp remarks Wednesday night.

"It was a new level of warning," said Mensur Akgun, a foreign policy specialist at Tesev, an Istanbul research organization. "And I think the Kurds and the international community should take it seriously."

Mohammed Sabir, the Washington representative of the PUK, agreed, while insisting that Iraq's Kurds harbor no secret desire for independence. "We are respecting the territorial integrity of Iraq," he said. "We hope our neighbors are respecting the same thing."