KURDISH LEADER SAYS HIS STATEMENTS WERE TO COUNTER TURKISH THREATS
Bassem Mroue

AP Worldstream
Published: Apr 10, 2007

Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani on Tuesday said remarks he made in a
television interview that drew a heated and threatening retort from
Turkey _ were nearly two months old and had been taken out of their
chronological context.

Barzani, leader of the Kurdish autonomous region in Iraq, said the
interview, aired Saturday by the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television, had
been recorded on Feb. 26, at a time when Turkey was openly challenging
Iraq’s government to delay a vote on the fate of the northern Iraqi
city of Kirkuk.

Kurds are hoping a constitutionally mandated referendum, which must
be held by year’s end, will allow the Kurds to attach Kirkuk and its
oil riches to the Kurdish semiautonomous region just to the north.

The city had a majority Kurdish population at the time of the last
census in 1957 but since then, during Saddam Hussein’s rule, became
heavily populated by Arabs encouraged to move to the city by the
dictator in a bid force out the Kurdish population. He believed Kurds
disloyal and aligned with neighboring Iran.

Kirkuk also has a sizable Turkmen population in the region. Turkmen
are ethnic Turks for which Ankara feels responsibility and who were
the majority in the city when it was under the Ottoman Empire.

Since Saddam’s ouster by American forces four years ago, tens of
thousands of Kurds have returned to Kirkuk and the central government
just decreed it would enforce a program to voluntarily resettle and
compensate those Arabs who migrated to Kirkuk after 1958.

Barzani’s remarks in the interview struck an extremely sensitive nerve
in Turkey, where more than 37,000 people have been killed in fighting
between Turkish security forces and Kurdish rebels since 1984, most
of them in the southeastern region bordering Iraq.

Ankara is concerned that Kurdish control over Kirkuk and its oil riches
will further embolden Iraqi Kurds to seek independence and could incite
the estimated 14 million Kurds in Turkey into outright rebellion.

On Tuesday, Turkey’s senior government and military officials discussed
possible political and economic measures against Iraq if the country
fails to move against separatist Kurdish guerrillas fighting Turkey.

A statement issued at the end of a four-hour National Security Council
meeting Tuesday said Turkey will closely watch Iraq’s response to a
Turkish request that it take urgent measures against the guerrillas,
who stage cross-border attacks on Turkey from bases in northern Iraq.

"My comments were in response to Turkish threats," Barzani explained
in a speech in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil Tuesday.

In the interview that was aired Saturday, Barzani said, "Turkey must
not intervene in the Kirkuk issue, and if it does, we will interfere
in Diyarbakir other cities in Turkey." Diyarbakir is the largest city
in Turkey’s Kurdish-dominated southeast.

Two days after the interview was broadcast, Turkish Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned Iraqi Kurds against meddling in Turkey’s
southeastern regions. He said the "price would be very high."

The Turkish leader further said Barzani was "out of place" and would be
"crushed under his words."

On Tuesday, Barzani shot back that "we heard the Turkish officials
comments and threats and sometimes the use of impolite language. … I
don’t understand how a country allows itself to interfere in the
affairs of others and become upset when others want to interfere in
their affairs."

"We don’t threaten anyone and we don’t accept threats from anyone,"
Barzani said.

Turkey’s state-run Anatolia news agency reported Monday that Iraqi
President Jalal Talabani, an ethnic Kurd, called Erdogan to tell he
had been saddened by the rising tensions.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Barzani’s comments in
the Al-Arabiya interview were "unhelpful, and they certainly do not
further the goal of greater Turkish-Iraqi cooperation on issues of
common concern, including fighting the PKK." The PKK is the Kurdistan
Workers Party, the heart of the separatist movement in Turkey.

Besides Sunni and Shiite Arabs and Kurds, Christians, Armenians and
Assyrians live in the ancient city of Kirkuk.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress