Kurdish Leader Backs Of From Talking Turkey

By Cernig

I'm still keeping one eye on the situation along the common borders between Turkey, Kurdish Iraq and Iran, as I think this is one of the most volatile flashpoints in the world at the moment. There's been some heavy rhetoric lately, but now the Kurdish leader seems to be backing off a bit, trying to allay Turkish fears of a resurgence in terrorism led by the PKK if a seperate Kurdish state coelesces around the city of Kirkuk.

"The Iraqi constitution has specified the road map to solving the issue of Kirkuk. What was taken from us by force, we will get back by democratic means," he told a news conference in Arbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan.

"If Turkey is worried about this issue, we are prepared to eliminate its fears," he said, adding he wanted bilateral talks.

A referendum on the status of Kirkuk, which sits on some of Iraq's richest oil fields, is due by the end of 2007.

Washington has reacted coolly to the Turkish general's remarks and earlier called Massoud Barzani's comments "unhelpful".

The continued escalation in rhetoric has worried U.S. officials who see Kurdistan as a stable front in northern Iraq.

"We are watching what is going on. There is a history here that we all understand. It is being viewed with a careful and cautious eye. There is interaction with members of the Iraqi government," said Rear Admiral Mark Fox, U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad.

Ahead of that referendum, the Iraqi parliament has already approved legislation to pay Arabs resettled in the Kirkuk area by Saddam to move homes again back to the areas they came from. That makes the probability that the referendum will go the Kurds' way almost a certainty.

The Kurdish leader also suggested that if Turkey would play along it would get preferential treatment on oil and other contracts with the Kurds. However, as Brian Ulrich at American Footprints notes, other factors are at play here too - like relations between Iran and Turkey.

"Turkey and Iran have quietly worked out a reciprocal security arrangement, whereby Iran's military will engage Kurdish separatists whenever encountered, in exchange for Turkey's cooperation against the Iranian Mujahideen-e-Khalq movement (MEK), a well-armed and cult-like opposition group that previously found refuge in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Both Iranian officials and Turkey's prime minister have alluded to 'mechanisms' (likely to involve intelligence-sharing) already in place to deal with security issues of mutual interest. Neither Turkey nor Iran has any desire to see an independent Kurdish state established in northern Iraq. For the moment, Turkey's cooperation with Iran is achieving better results than its frustrating inability to persuade the United States to help eliminate a designated terrorist group in northern Iraq. The Erdogan government continues to forge a distinctly Turkish foreign policy, conducted in alliance with, but not in submission to, the United States. In a recent interview, Erdogan vowed that Turkey would not allow attacks on its neighbors from its territory, adding, in an obvious allusion to Iran, that all countries had a right to pursue the development of a peaceful nuclear energy program.

There are also allegations and persistent rumors of Israeli and US intelligence operations in Iran, using the MeK and the Kurdish PJAK (The Iranian Kurdish branch of the PKK) as proxies.

The term best used is "powderkeg".

In this light, I'm still thinking about the possible effects of massive demonstrations against the possibility of Islamist Turkish PM Erdogan replacing the current secular Turkish president when that worthy's term expires. Sure, Edogan is an Islamist and his presidency could well tilt what has until now been a secular and democratic Moslem state in that direction - but then again, the fiercly secular Army has taken action in the past to preserve Turkey's secular character...and it is the army which is making the most noise about attacks into Iraq against the PKK. Edogan seems to actually want to negotiate rather than fight. Meanwhile, the army goes right on preparing the path for invasion.