Associated Press Worldstream
January 18, 2007 Thursday 4:17 PM GMT

Turkey’s parliament rejects censure motion against foreign minister

Turkey’s parliament on Thursday rejected an opposition motion to
censure the foreign minister over accusations of mismanaging the
country’s foreign policy.

Abdullah Gul’s Justice and Development Party easily defeated the
censure motion filed by the opposition center-right Motherland Party.

The party had accused the minister of "making concession to the
European Union," of harming ties with the United States, failing to
pursue farsighted policies over Iraq and Cyprus and of failing to
counter Armenian efforts to push for the recognition as genocide of
mass killings of Armenians at the time of the Ottoman Empire.

The legislators held the vote which was defeated by a majority show
of hands in the 550-member parliament before discussing Turkey’s
policy over Iraq.

Opposition parties have called for troops to be sent in to northern
Iraq to wipe out Turkish Kurdish guerrillas there and to prevent
Iraqi Kurds from assuming control over the oil-rich city of Kirkuk.
Turkey is concerned over the spiraling violence in neighboring Iraq,
and has expressed dissatisfaction with U.S. and Iraqi efforts to
contain separatist Turkish Kurdish guerrillas who Ankara says have
been using bases in Iraq to fight for autonomy in Turkey’s southeast.

Thursday’s preliminary discussions on Iraq would be followed by wider
and closed-door debates on the issue amid growing calls from the main
opposition Republican People’s Party to allow the military to carry
out a cross-border offensive against Kurdish guerrillas.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan met with U.S.
Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns to discuss Iraq and Iran’s
controversial nuclear program.

Also on Thursday, Turkey called on Iraqi and U.S. authorities to shut
down the Makhmur refugee camp in Iraq. The camp houses an estimated
9,000 Turkish Kurds who fled to Iraq in the early 1990s during
fighting between Turkish troops and Kurdish rebels. Turkish
authorities accuse Kurdish guerrillas of indoctrinating children in
the camp to become rebels.

Erdogan on Tuesday warned Iraqi Kurdish groups against trying to
seize control of the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, saying Turkey
will not stand by amid growing tensions among ethnic Turkmens, Arabs
and Kurds in Iraq’s oil-rich north.

Iraqi Kurds, who claim the region as their own and hope to eventually
include Kirkuk in a region of self-rule in northern Iraq, accused
Turkey of interfering in Iraqi internal affairs.

Turkey fears Iraq’s Kurds want Kirkuk’s lucrative oil to fund a bid
for independence that could encourage separatist Kurdish guerrillas
in Turkey, who have been fighting since 1984 for autonomy.

Kirkuk, an ancient city that once was part of the Ottoman Empire, has
a large minority of ethnic Turks as well as Christians, Shiite and
Sunni Arabs, Armenians and Assyrians.

Since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, thousands of Kurds
pushed out of the region under Saddam Hussein’s rule have returned.

Kirkuk lies just south of the autonomous Kurdish region stretching
across Iraq’s northeast. Kurdish leaders want to annex the city, and
Iraq’s constitution calls for a referendum on the issue by the end of
next year.