Turkey snaps over US bombing of its brethren
By K Gajendra Singh
Al-Jazeerah
September 19 , 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 firm! s 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 Kurdishcity” 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 str! uggle 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,” saidthe Kurdish council member. Arabs, Turkmens, Sunnis and
Shi’a expressed vociferous opposition to the proposed federal system
for Kurdish Iraq. Theyorganized 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 Ku! rds 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 t! he 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’a, like their ethnic kin, the Alevis in
Turkey, but many have given up Turkmen traditionsin favor of the
urban, clerical religion common among the Arabs of the south. Kirkuk
is therefore a stronghold of th! e Muqtada al-Sadr movement which has
given US-led forces such a hard time in the south in Najaf. The
influential Shi’i 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 areeven 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
19! 84 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 autonomyto 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’a in Iran helped the PKK
to esta blish 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’a
in the south) to revolt againstSaddam’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’i state in south Iraq. The hapless Iraqi Kurds and Shi’a 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 inthe 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:
[email protected]