Foreign Correspondence

[Amaunet]

Iraq instability threatens Turkey
by Scott Taylor
Friday 06 May 2005 6:36 AM GMT




Over the past few weeks, the media reports coming out of Iraq have focussed extensively on the insurgents' escalating attacks against US military and Iraqi police forces.


Overshadowed by the coverage of this series of suicide bomb attacks has been the dramatic and ominous development of unrest along the Iraq-Turkey border.

For the first time since US President George Bush launched his military intervention to topple Saddam Hussein in March 2003, the violent anarchy which ensued throughout Iraq is now spilling over into neighbouring countries.

On 20 April, following 10 days of sporadic combat, the Turkish government announced its defence forces had killed 33 Kurdish rebels after they had crossed the Iraqi border.

Although the military did not release its own casualty figures, Namik Tan, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, estimated that Turkish security forces "suffered between 15 and 17 fatalities in the clashes with the Kurds".

These losses are significant. However, Turkish intelligence estimates that since the beginning of April some 1500 Kurdish guerrillas have crossed into eastern Turkey via the mountain paths along the Iraq border.

These fighters belong to the hardline Kurdish separatist group known as the PKK (the Kurdish acronym for the Kurdistan Workers Party) which has been linked to terrorist activities.

In the early 1990s the PKK waged a long and bloody struggle to gain independence for the Kurdish majority living in eastern Turkey.

However, by the end of the decade, Turkish security forces had clearly gained the upper hand militarily, and political reforms were eroding popular support for the separatist movement.

With the 1999 arrest of their leader, Abdullah Ocalan, the PKK remnants fled into the Kurdish-controlled region of northern Iraq.

As part of an internationally brokered ceasefire, the PKK camps in Iraq were monitored by the United Nations. That supervision ended following the US-led intervention in Iraq and the UN's subsequent decision to withdraw all of its personnel until the coalition forces could establish a secure environment.

Despite repeated requests by the Turkish government, the US-led coalition forces did not attempt to secure or contain the PKK camps subsequent to the UN pullout.

"The Americans regarded the Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq provinces as stable, and therefore they have been content to let [the Iraqi Kurd leaders] Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani have a free rein," said professor Umit Ozdaq, director of the Ankara-based Centre for Eurasian Studies.

"Unfortunately, that decision has led to this current crisis."

There is no question that the two rival Iraqi Kurdish leaders enjoy a strong measure of American support and tolerance.

Despite their appointments to prominent positions within the new Iraqi government - Talabani as president and Barzani as director of the Kurdish provinces - the former warlords still maintain their own private peshmerga (militia) armies, and their own private Asaish (secret service) agencies.

More importantly, US authorities have allowed the Iraqi Kurds to steadily entrench their control over the oil-rich northern Iraq city of Kirkuk.

Should Kurdish claims to Kirkuk be formally recognised, the oil revenue would be sufficient to make an independent Kurdistan economically viable.

The Turkish government has always maintained that such a move would not only violate the rights of the (Turkish-speaking) Iraqi Turkmen population of Kirkuk, but that an independent Kurdistan might also re-ignite the separatist movement in eastern Turkey.

This latest incursion of PKK guerrillas into Turkey proves such fears of renewed violence are well founded. "At the moment, the PKK have been prevented from entering the major cities and towns," said Namik Tan.

"They are only operating from the mountains and caves."
In order to keep the Kurdish incursion in check, the Turks have deployed the 7th Army Corps along with air force units to augment the already considerable Jendarma (interior police) in the border region.

Although they publicly distance themselves from the PKK extremists, moderate Kurdish politicians are using the renewed guerrilla activity to press the Turkish government for additional concessions.

"What they are asking for is autonomy within a federation, but this would simply be the first step towards independence," said Professor Ozdaq. "From a Turkish perspective, that is unacceptable."

The Turkish government's goal is to quickly neutralise the PKK guerrilla threat before it can gain widespread popular support.

During nearly 10 years of fighting, the previous Kurdish insurrection in Turkey left some 30,000 people dead, and this already impoverished region was subjected to widespread destruction.

"The people of eastern Turkey are weary of war and the political reforms made towards improving Kurdish civil rights have eliminated many of the root causes of the separatists," said Namik Tan.

"Unfortunately, the situation in Iraq is allowing leaders such as Barzani to use the PKK to further destabilise the region."

Iraq-based US forces, already unable to contain the insurgency in the Sunni Triangle, are stretched too thin at the moment to even contemplate a clampdown on the Kurdish leaders.

However, as the incursion of the PKK into Turkey illustrates, the magnitude of the US failure to seize control of the northern Iraq border and to demobilise the peshmerga has yet to be fully recognised.

Former Canadian soldier Scott Taylor is the editor of Esprit de Corps military magazine and a veteran war correspondent. He has visited Iraq 20 times since August 2000 and is the author of Spinning on the Axis of Evil: America's War against Iraq and Among the Others: Encounters with the Forgotten Turkmen of Iraq. Last September he was held hostage for five days in northern Iraq by Ansar al-Islam Mujahadin.

The opinions expressed here are the author's and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position or have the endorsement of Aljazeera.


Aljazeera
By Scott Taylor

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