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Iraq's Kurds see Turkish peacekeepers as war-mongers
AFP
9 September 2003
by Rory Mulholland

SULAIMANIYA (Iraq) / They're the same as the Baath party, they want to kill us," said fruit juice seller Taleb Said Ali.

It was a fairly typical reaction here in the Kurdish north to the prospect of Turkish troops helping to tame post-Saddam Iraq.

While Kurds here battled Saddam Hussein's regime for decades, their ethnic kin across the mountainous border with Turkey fought their own battle against the Turkish army to preserve their language and culture.

Most Iraqi Kurds are thus appalled at the prospect of troops from that same army now arriving to help the Americans rebuild and stabilise the war-shattered country.

One of the first public statements Iraq's new interim foreign minister, Hoshiar Zebari, himself a Kurd, made after his appointment last week was that Turkish troops were not welcome because they would bring with them their own political agenda.

That view was echoed here in Sulaimaniya, a prosperous town cradled by sun-browned mountains that is the capital of one of the Kurdish provinces in northern Iraq.

"The Turks are ambitious, they want to occupy our lands," said toy shop assistant Hawser Ahmed. "They haven't liked us for hundreds of years. They want to come in because of Kirkuk, where the oil is."

The Turkish government is currently mulling plans to send about 10,000 troops to Iraq, at the request of the United States, which is seeking to ease the burden on its overstretched military.

The Turkish soldiers would likely be given control of Al-Anbar, a province far south of Kurdistan that stretches from near Baghdad right to the borders with Syria and Jordan.

But to get their troops there they would have to establish a "corridor" through Kurdish areas. This would be unacceptable to most Kurds.

"The only people who would welcome them anywhere in Iraq are the Turkmen people," said Asos Hardi, editor of Hawlati weekly newspaper in Sulaimaniya.
Since the fall of Saddam in April, Iraq's minority Turkmen, who are linked ethnically and culturally to the Turks and who live along the southern fringes of Kurdistan, have feared a landgrab by the Kurds.

"The most dangerous thing they (the Turks) could do would be to give the Turkmen money and guns," said Hardi. "There are already tensions in Kirkuk. If things explode there the Turks would use this as an excuse to go into Kurdistan."

Iraq's four million Kurds lived in their autonomous region since the 1991 Gulf war, protected from Saddam's Baathist regime by Western air patrols.

Ankara is worried that they are trying to carve out a homeland for themselves, which might inspire Turkey's own millions of Kurds.

Yet few Kurds here said they were prepared to take up arms against Turkish troops if they ever did arrive.

"It's a decision for the Governing Council. They will do what's best," said Zebari last week, a sentiment echoed by many in Sulaimaniya who are grateful to the US-led forces who finally toppled Saddam.

The US military in Iraq's Kurdistan play down the prospect of unrest if Turkish troops come to help them crush suspected Saddam loyalists or other anti- American fighters.

"If they're just transiting through I don't see any problem," said Lieutenant Colonel Harry Schute, commander of US forces in the Kurdish areas.

"There are already Turkish soldiers in the region. There are between 1,500 and 1,900 in Dohuk, so they're not a stranger to this area."

The Turkish forces he was referring to are here to keep an eye on a several-thousand-strong force of Kurdish rebels from Turkey who have holed up in Iraq's mountainous north.

These rebels, formerly the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) but now known as KADEK, recently ended a ceasefire that had halted a campaign that left tens of thousands dead in Turkey. But they have not resumed hostilities.

Observers say Ankara, a key NATO ally and the alliance's only mostly Muslim member, is angling for a promise from Washington that it will deal with these rebels before Turkish troops are commmitted to Iraq.