[A-List] Turkey, Kurds, Iraq

["bon moun" <sherrynstan@xxxxxxx>]

Turkey, the U.S. and the Kurds in northern Iraq 
  
John K. Cooley IHT 
Thursday, July 24, 2003


ATHENS - Vice President Dick Cheney and other senior Bush administration
officials have plenty to discuss with Turkey's Foreign Minister Abdullah
Gul in Washington this week. The main subject - a U.S. request to Turkey
to send at least 10,000 Turkish peacekeeping troops to Iraq - could
crucially affect U.S. relations with its old ally. 
.
The United States and Britain sorely need an international peacekeeping
force, with or without UN auspices, to stabilize Iraq. With the dispatch
of a few hundred Poles and a token force offered by Spain, Italy and
some eastern European states, and after refusals from France, Germany
and India to send soldiers, the idea of Turkish participation has become
more interesting. 
.
Foreign Minister Gul has indicated that Ankara would consider the idea,
and Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, confirms it has been
raised. But Turkey has its own agenda in Iraq, which may clash with
America's Kurdish allies. 
.
Like Washington, Ankara wants to warm up U.S.-$ Turkish relations, which
were strongly chilled last March. The extreme unpopularity of the
brewing U.S.-led war in Iraq then led Turkey to reject U.S. requests to
allow over 60,000 U.S. troops to use Turkey as a war base. 
.
Ankara and Washington would also like to put behind them at least two
publicly-reported incidents since last March. Some Turkish Special
Forces soldiers in Iraq's northern Kurdish region were detained and
expelled by U.S. officers who suspected them of planning hostile acts
against the Kurds. 
.
Turkish troops were originally deployed in Iraq's north to monitor a
cease-fire between the two main Kurdish groups and to keep an eye on
about 5,000 separatist Kurdish fighters of the outlawed Marxist
Kurdistan Workers' Party, now called KADEK. These have consolidated and
strengthened their old bases in northern Iraq as a result of the
security provided by U.S. and British air power against Saddam Hussein's
forces during the previous decade, and the relative stability and
prosperity brought by the allied occupation since March. 
.
Rebel Kurdish attacks have recently recurred inside Turkey. This, and
Turkey's disapproval of the Kurds' seizure of the oil-rich Kirkuk and
Mosul regions - where the ethnic Turkish or Turcoman minority lives
alongside Kurds and Arabs - have added to mutual distrust between Turkey
and the United States. Turkey's government and its politically powerful
armed forces have an almost paranoid fear that the 23 million or so
ethnic Kurds in Turkey will be encouraged by the ascendancy of
U.S.-protected Kurds in northern Iraq to join in creating the nucleus of
an independent Kurdish state. 
.
Turkey's perennial Kurdish problem is a huge embarrassment at a time
when Turkey is seeking entry into the European Union. Some steps have
been taken in authorizing Kurdish language instruction and in other
matters, but much remains to be done. These concerns were apparently
discussed when General John Abizaid, the new American commander in Iraq,
and other officials, met in Ankara July 17-19. Their meetings with
senior Turkish military chiefs seem to have helped prepare for Gul's
current talks in Washington. These talks should include discussion on
how to overcome Kurdish opposition to the entry of any large Turkish
contingent into Iraq. 
.
Both the U.S. Ambassador in Ankara, Robert Pearson, and U.S. Deputy
Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, one of the strongest believers in a
U.S.-$ Turkish partnership in the administration, have repeatedly said
that Washington supports Ankara's wish to rid northern Iraq of rebel
Kurds. KADEK is listed in both capitals as a terrorist organization. 
.
The Turkish and Kurdish factors are further complicating the already
complex and burdensome tasks the Bush administration has taken on in
Iraq. Tough, forward-looking and imaginative diplomacy is urgently
needed to deal with them now, before they erupt into more violence, or
split the United States further apart from Turkey, its ally of the cold
war years. The writer is an author and former foreign correspondent who
has covered North Africa, the Middle East, Greece and Turkey since the
1950s.