Turkey snaps over US bombing of its bretheren
By K Gajendra Singh
Asia Times, Hong Kong
Sept 17 2004
For the first time since the acrimonious exchange of words in July
last year following the arrest and imprisonment of 11 Turkish
commandos in Kurdish Iraq, for which Washington expressed “regret”,
differences erupted publicly this week between North Atlantic Treaty
Organization allies Turkey and the US over attacks on Turkey’s ethnic
cousins, the Turkmens in northern Iraq.
Talking to a Turkish TV channel, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul warned
that if the US did not cease its attacks on Tal Afar, a Turkmen city
at the junction of Turkey, Iraq and Syria, Ankara might withdraw its
support to the US in Iraq.
“I told [US Secretary of State Colin Powell] that what is being done
there is harming the civilian population, that it is wrong, and that
if it continues, Turkey’s cooperation on issues regarding Iraq will
come to a total stop.” He added, “We will continue to say these
things. Of course we will not stop only at words. If necessary, we
will not hesitate to do what has to be done.”
Turkey is a key US ally in a largely hostile region. US forces use
its Incirlik military base near northern Iraq. Turkish firms are also
involved heavily in the construction and transport business in Iraq,
with hundreds of Turkish vehicles bringing in goods for the US
military every day. It is an alternative route through friendly
northern Kurdish territory to those from Jordan and Kuwait. But many
Turks have been kidnapped by Iraqi insurgent groups and some have
been killed.
Turkey contains a large ethnic Turkmen population and Ankara has long
seen itself as the guardian of their rights, particularly across the
border in northern Iraq, where they constitute a significant
minority.
The US attacks on Tal Afar, which Iraqi Turkmen groups in Turkey say
have left 120 dead and over 200 injured, were launched, the US says,
to root out terrorists. The US has denied the extent of the damage,
saying that it avoided civilian targets and killed only terrorists it
says were infiltrating the town from Syria.
US ambassador to Turkey Eric Edelman commented, “We are carrying out
a limited military operation and we are trying to keep civilian
losses to a minimum. We cannot completely eliminate the possibility
[of civilian casualties] … We believe the operation is being
conducted with great care,” he said after briefing Turkish officials.
There have not been any reports of further attacks since the Turkish
warning.
The deterioration in US-Turkish relations underlines the
fast-changing strategic scenario in the region in the post-Cold War
era after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the September 11 attacks
on the US, the US-led invasion on Iraq, now conceded as illegal by
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, and the deteriorating
security situation in that country.
Despite negative signals on Ankara’s mission to join the European
Union, Turkey is moving away from the US and closer to the EU – it is
even looking to buy Airbuses, and arms, from Europe rather than the
US.
At the same time, Turkey is drawing closer to Syria, normalizing
relations with Iran and improving economic relations with Russia, as
well as discuss with Moscow ways to counter terrorist acts, from
which both Russia and Turkey suffer. Russian President Vladimir Putin
called off a visit to Turkey when the hostage crisis broke at Beslan
in the Russian Caucasus last week.
And Turkey has also moved away from long-time friend Israel, the US’s
umbilically aligned strategic partner in the Middle East. Turkey has
accused Israel of “state terrorism” against Palestinians. A recent
ruling party team from Turkey returned from Tel Aviv not satisfied
with Israeli explanations over charges that it was interfering in
northern Iraqi affairs.
With newspapers full of stories and TV screens showing the Turkmens
being attacked in the US operations at Tal Afar, many Turks are angry
at what is being done to their ethnic brethren. These have been large
protests outside the US Embassy in Ankara, and the belief that the US
attacks are a part of a campaign to ethnically cleanse the Turkmens
from northern Iraq is widespread.
“Some people are uncomfortable with the ethnic structure of this
area, so, using claims of a terrorist threat, they went in and killed
people,” said Professor Suphi Saatci of the Kirkuk Foundation, one of
several Turkmen groups in Turkey.
He claims that the the attacks are a part of a wider campaign to
establish Kurdish control over all of northern Iraq, and he points to
the removal of Turkmen officials from governing positions in the
region to be replaced by Kurds. He also says that the Iraqi police
force deployed in northern Iraq is dominated by members of Kurdish
factions. “The US is acting completely under the direction of the
Kurdish parties in northern Iraq,” says Saatci. “Tal Afar is a
clearly Turkmen area and this is something they were very jealous
of.”
While Kurdish officials deny any attempt to alter the ethnic balance
in the region, last week Masud Barzani, leader of one of the two
largest Kurdish parties, the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP), said
that Kirkuk “is a Kurdish city” and one that the KDP was willing to
fight for, which certainly did not calm fears of the Turkmens and
angered the Turks. Many Turkmen see Kirkuk as historically theirs.
Turkey considers northern Iraq – ie Kurdistan – as part of its sphere
of influence, especially the Turkmen minority. Ankara is especially
concerned that the Kurds in Iraq don’t gain full autonomy as this
would likely fire the aspirations of Turkey’s Kurdish minority.
The US military disputes that its forces laid siege to Tal Afar,
saying that the operation was to free the city from insurgents,
including foreign fighters, who had turned it into a haven for
militants smuggling men and arms across the Syrian border. And a
military spokesman denied that Kurds were using US forces to gain the
upper hand in their ethnic struggle with the Turkmens. The US
characterized the resistance in Tal Afar as put up by a disparate
group of former Saddam Hussein loyalists, religious extremists and
foreign fighters who were united only by their opposition to US
forces.
Gareth Stansfield, a regional specialist at the Center of Arab and
Islamic Studies at Britain’s University of Exeter, said recently that
“the most important angle of what the Turkish concern is [and that
is] that there is a strong belief in Ankara that Iyad Allawi, the
Iraqi prime minister, and the Americans, were suckered into attacking
Tal Afar by Kurdish intelligence circles, and really brought to Tal
Afar to target ostensibly al-Qaeda and anti-occupation forces with
the Kurds knowing full well that this would also bring them up
against Turkmens and create a rift between Washington and Ankara over
their treatment of a Turkmen city.”
Turkey maintains a few hundred troops in the region as a security
presence to monitor Turkish Kurd rebels who have some hideouts in the
region. But any large-scale presence has been derailed by the
objections of Iraqi Kurdish leaders. “That has created an uneasy
state of co-existence between Ankara and the two major Kurdish
political parties, the Kurdish Democratic Party and Patriotic Union
of Kurdistan, a balance which any US military operation in the area
could easily disturb.”
Stansfield added that the incident shows how volatile tensions remain
between Ankara and the Iraqi Kurds, despite ongoing efforts by both
sides to work together. “The Turkish position has become increasingly
more sophisticated over the last months, and arguably years, with
Ankara finding an accommodation with the KDP and PUK and beginning to
realize that while it is not their favored option to allow the Kurds
to be autonomous in the north of Iraq, it is perhaps one of the
better options that they are faced with in this situation,” said
Stansfield.
He added, “However, the relationship between the two principle
Kurdish parties and the government of Turkey will always be
sensitized by the Kurds’ treatment of Turkmens and indeed now the
American treatment of Turkmens vis-a-vis Kurds.”
Transfer of sovereignty and the Kurds
In January this year, the then Iraqi Governing Council agreed to a
federal structure to enshrine Kurdish self-rule in three northern
provinces of Iraq. This was to be included in a “fundamental law”
that would precede national elections in early 2005. The fate of
three more provinces claimed by the Kurds was to be decided later.
“In the fundamental law, Kurdistan will have the same legal status as
it has now,” said a Kurdish council member, referring to the region
that has enjoyed virtual autonomy since the end of the 1991 Gulf War.
“When the constitution is written and elections are held, we will not
agree to less than what is in the fundamental law, and we may ask for
more,” said the Kurdish council member. Arabs, Turkmens, Sunnis and
Shi’ites expressed vociferous opposition to the proposed federal
system for Kurdish Iraq. They organized demonstrations leading to
ethnic tensions and violence in Kirkuk and many other cities in north
Iraq. Many protesters were killed and scores were injured.
However, when “sovereignty” was transferred on June 30 to the interim
government led by Iyad Allawi, the interim constitutional arrangement
did not include a federal structure for Kurdish self-rule, although
to pacify the Kurds, key portfolios of defense and foreign affairs
were allotted to them.
A press release from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) stated
that “the current situation in Iraq and the new-found attitude of the
US, UK and UN has led to a serious re-think for the Kurds. The
proposed plans do not seem to promise the expected Kurdish role in
the future of a new Iraq. The Kurds feel betrayed once again.” It
added that “if the plight of the Kurds is ignored yet again and we
are left with no say in the future of a new Iraq, the will of the
Kurdish people will be too great for the Kurdish political parties to
ignore, leading to a total withdrawal from any further discussions
relating to the formation of any new Iraqi government. This will
certainly not serve the unity of Iraq.” Underlining that the Kurds
have been the only true friends and allies of the US coalition, the
release concluded that “the Kurds will no longer be second-class
citizens in Iraq”. However, the Kurds did not precipitate matters.
Demographic changes in north Iraq
Kirkuk, with a population of some 750,000, and other towns are now
the scene of ethnic and demographic struggles between Turkmens, Arabs
and Kurds, with the last wanting to take over the region and make the
city a part of an autonomous zone, with Kirkuk as its capital.
The area around Kirkuk has 6% of the world’s oil reserves. In April
2003, it was estimated that the population was 250,000 each for
Turkmen, Arab and Kurd. A large number of Arabs were settled there by
Saddam Hussein, and they are mostly Shi’ites from the south. The
Turkmens are generally Shi’ites, like their ethnic kin, the Alevis in
Turkey, but many have given up Turkmen traditions in favor of the
urban, clerical religion common among the Arabs of the south. Kirkuk
is therefore a stronghold of the Muqtada al-Sadr movement which has
given US-led forces such a hard time in the south in Najaf. The
influential Shi’ite political party, the Supreme Council for Islamic
Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), also has good support, perhaps 40%, in
the region. Kurds are mostly Sunnis, and were the dominant population
in Kirkuk in the 1960s and 1970s, before Saddam’s Arabization policy
saw a lot of Kurds moved further north.
According to some estimates, over 70,000 Kurds have entered Kirkuk
over the past 17 months, and about 50,000 Arabs have fled back to the
south. It can be said, therefore, that now there are about 320,000
Kurds and 200,000 Arabs in the city. The number of Turkmen has also
been augmented. During the Ottoman rule, the Turkmen dominated the
city, and it was so until oil was discovered. It is reported that,
encouraged by the Kurdish leadership, as many as 500 Kurds a day are
returning to the city. The changes are being carried out for the
quick-fix census planned for October, which in turn will be the basis
for the proportional representation for the planned January
elections, if these are even held, given the country’s security
problems. Both the Turkmens and Arabs have said that the Kurds are
using these demographic changes to engulf Kirkuk and ensure that it
is added to the enlarged Kurdish province which they are planning.
The Kurds hope to get at least semi-autonomous status from Baghdad.
North Iraq and Turkey’s Kurdish problem
Turkey has serious problems with its own Kurds, who form 20% of the
population. A rebellion since 1984 against the Turkish state led by
Abdullah Ocalan of the Marxist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) has cost
over 35,000 lives, including 5,000 soldiers. To control and
neutralize the rebellion, thousands of Kurdish villages have been
bombed, destroyed, abandoned or relocated; millions of Kurds have
been moved to shanty towns in the south and east or migrated
westwards. The economy of the region was shattered. With a third of
the Turkish army tied up in the southeast, the cost of countering the
insurgency at its height amounted to between $6 billion to $8 billion
a year.
The rebellion died down after the arrest and trial of Ocalan, in
1999, but not eradicated. After a court in Turkey in 2002 commuted to
life imprisonment the death sentence passed on Ocalan and parliament
granted rights for the use of the Kurdish language, some of the root
causes of the Kurdish rebellion were removed. The PKK – now also
called Konga-Gel – shifted almost 4,000 of its cadres to northern
Iraq and refused to lay down arms as required by a Turkish
“repentance law”. The US’s priority to disarm PKK cadres was never
very high. In fact, the US wants to reward Iraqi Kurds, who have
remained mostly peaceful and loyal while the rest of the country has
not.
Early this month, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that
Turkey’s patience was running out over US reluctance to take military
action against Turkish Kurds hiding in northern Iraq. In 1999, the
PKK declared a unilateral ceasefire after the capture of its leader,
Ocalan. But the ceasefire was not renewed in June and there have been
increasing skirmishes and battles between Kurdish insurgents and
Turkish security forces inside Turkey. Turkey remains frustrated over
US reluctance to employ military means against the PKK fighters – in
spite of promises to do so.
Iraqi Kurds have been ambivalent to the PKK, helping them at times.
Ankara has entered north Iraq from time to time – despite protests –
to attack PKK bases and its cadres. Ankara has also said that it
would regard an independent Kurdish entity as a cause for war. It is
opposed to the Kurds seizing the oil centers around Kirkuk, which
would give them financial autonomy, and this would also constitute a
reason for entry into north Iraq. The Turks vehemently oppose any
change in the ethnic composition of the city of Kirkuk .
The Turks manifest a pervasive distrust of autonomy or models of a
federal state for Iraqi Kurds. It would affect and encourage the
aspirations of their own Kurds. It also revives memories of Western
conspiracies against Turkey and the unratified 1920 Treaty of Sevres
forced on the Ottoman Sultan by the World War I victors which had
promised independence to the Armenians and autonomy to Turkey’s
Kurds. So Mustafa Kemal Ataturk opted for the unitary state of Turkey
and Kurdish rebellions in Turkey were ruthlessly suppressed.
The 1980s war between Iraq and resurgent Shi’ites in Iran helped the
PKK to establish itself in the lawless north Kurdish Iraq territory.
The PKK also helped itself with arms freely available in the region
during the eight-year war.
The 1990-91 Gulf crisis and war proved to be a watershed in the
violent explosion of the Kurdish rebellion in Turkey. A nebulous and
ambiguous situation emerged in north Iraq when, at the end of the
war, US president Bush Sr encouraged the Kurds (and the hapless
Shi’ites in the south) to revolt against Saddam’s Sunni Arab regime.
Turkey was dead against it, as a Kurdish state in the north would
give ideas to its own Kurds.
Saudi Arabia and other Arab states in the Gulf were totally opposed
to a Shi’ite state in south Iraq. The hapless Iraqi Kurds and
Shi’ites paid a heavy price. Thousands were butchered. The
international media’s coverage of the pitiable conditions, with more
than half a million Iraqi Kurds escaping towards the Turkish border
from Saddam’s forces in March 1991, led to the creation of a
protected zone in north Iraq, later patrolled by US and British war
planes. The Iraqi Kurds did elect a parliament, but it never
functioned properly. Kurdish leaders Massoud Barzani and Jalal
Talabani run almost autonomous administrations in their areas. This
state of affairs has allowed the PKK a free run in north Iraq.
After the 1991 war, Turkey lost out instead of gaining as promised by
the US. The closure of Iraqi pipelines, economic sanctions and the
loss of trade with Iraq, which used to pump billions of US dollars
into the economy and provide employment to hundreds of thousands,
with thousands of Turkish trucks roaring up and down to Iraq, only
exacerbated the economic and social problems in the Kurdish heartland
and the center of the PKK rebellion.
But many Turks still remain fascinated with the dream of “getting
back” the Ottoman provinces of Kurdish-majority Mosul and Kirkuk in
Iraq. They were originally included within the sacred borders of the
republic proclaimed in the National Pact of 1919 by Ataturk and his
comrades, who had started organizing resistance to fight for Turkey’s
independence from the occupying World War I victors.
So it has always remained a mission and objective to be reclaimed
some time. The oil-rich part of Mosul region was occupied by the
British forces illegally after the armistice and then annexed to
Iraq, then under British mandate, in 1925, much to Turkish chagrin.
Iraq was created by joining Ottoman Baghdad and Basra vilayats
(provinces). Turks also base their claims on behalf of less than half
a million Turkmen who lived in Kirkuk with the Kurds before
Arabization changed the ethnic balance of the region.
With its attacks on Tal Afar, the US is stirring a very deep well of
discontent.
K Gajendra Singh, Indian ambassador (retired), served as ambassador
to Turkey from August 1992 to April 1996. Prior to that, he served
terms as ambassador to Jordan, Romania and Senegal. He is currently
chairman of the Foundation for Indo-Turkic Studies. Emai:
Gajendrak@hotmail.com