Turkey only 'viable alternative' for Iraqi Kurds, says ICG

Turkey emerges as the only viable alternative for Iraq's Kurds as the US, their main protector against the Baghdad government and neighboring states, prepares to withdraw from Iraq, and amid growing tension in their ties with the Baghdad government, an international think tank has said in a report.


The report, titled “Iraq and The Kurds: Trouble Along The Trigger Line,” and drawn up by the International Crisis Group (ICG), was released in Brussels on Wednesday. It mainly focuses on the ongoing tension between the federal government in Baghdad and the Kurdish regional government in Arbil. While analyzing the roots of the tension, the report also casts a probable role for Turkey in various scenarios.

Fouad Hussein, Massoud Barzani's chief of staff, was quoted in the report as saying: “If the Shiites choose Iran, and the Sunnis choose the Arab world, then the Kurds will have to ally themselves with Turkey. In turn, Turkey will need the Kurds in that case. We are compelled to be with Turkey, and from Turkey's perspective they have no other friend or partner in Iraq. We don't love each other, but we don't need to. If the Americans withdraw soon without [mediating] a good political arrangement [for the Kurds] with Baghdad, there will be conflict, and then Turkey will have no choice.”

In the report, the ICG elaborates on the Iraqi Kurdish people's concerns over their situation after US withdrawal from Iraq, with Iraqi Kurdish leaders agreeing that withdrawal would be calamitous for Iraq, including the Kurdish region.

“Historically, the Kurds have been caught between the needs to fight to protect their national movement -- an endeavor that has forced them into the mountains and inflicted huge damage on their people -- and to seek accommodation with stronger actors surrounding them. In either case, they require a reliable protector, and this they have never had. Iran's support in 1974-1975 proved fickle. US post-1991 protection was never fully satisfying, even if it kept the Kurdistan region safe. The Kurds had greater hopes for US support after 2003, but while Washington provided unprecedented political space for them to operate in Iraq, their leaders complained that the US should have done more in support of their main goal, which has been to incorporate Kirkuk,” the report summarized.

“Still, Iraqi Kurds have flourished like none of their regional brethren, enjoying both protection and development, however uneven. The prospect of the loss of the US as their direct protector against both Baghdad and neighboring states -- just as the [Prime Minister Nouri] Maliki government is seeking to reverse some of the KRG's [Kurdistan Regional Government] territorial gains -- is now forcing Kurdish leaders to view one of those states, Turkey, as the only viable alternative, even if the US retains a residual military presence,” the report, then, suggested.
Ankara has long accused Iraqi Kurds of turning a blind eye to the presence of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) within its territory. Bilateral relations between Iraq and Turkey entered a new phase after a landmark visit to Ankara by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani in early March 2008. Before that, Talabani, elected president in 2005, had visited Ankara in September 2004 as then-president of the governing council of Iraq. Talabani's visit was followed by a visit to Baghdad by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in summer 2008.

Massoud Barzani, head of the largely autonomous Kurdistan region in northern Iraq, has long been viewed with suspicion in Turkey for tolerating the PKK presence in northern Iraq, but in a sign of a thaw, the government initiated diplomatic-level dialogue with the Kurdish leader in February 2009, before President Abdullah Gül's landmark official visit to Baghdad in March.

The visit made him the first president from Turkey to visit neighboring Iraq in 33 years.
According to the ICG: “Turkey may be a traditional Kurdish enemy, but it has the great advantage of offering a lifeline to Europe, an export channel for the Kurdistan region's oil and gas trade and investment for its booming economy and protection from the one old enemy the Kurds distrust even more -- Baghdad. Kurdish leaders started talking openly about the need to deal with Turkey in 2007, after the re-election there of the Justice and Development Party [AK Party]; relations have improved steadily since then, despite repeated Turkish bombardments of suspected bases of the Kurdistan Workers' Party in northern Iraq. The relationship is based on recognition that Turkey and the KRG may need each other.”

Citing several meetings between Turkish and KRG officials, the report suggested that both sides have stressed the need for a process of confidence-building steps that would lead to an agreement on relations, including Turkey's formal recognition of the KRG.

“Surprisingly, these developments have revived the notion of ‘Mosul vilayet,' Iraq's old Mosul province to which post-Ottoman Turkey laid claim.

However, this time the impetus is coming not from Turkish nationalist circles but from the Kurdish side, even at senior levels. A KRG minister said, ‘We have the right to be independent, but if that doesn't work out, then I'd rather be with Turkey than Iraq, because Iraq is undemocratic.' The best way forward, he said, was for ‘the Kurdistan region to join Turkey as part of a new Mosul vilayet and for Turkey to join the EU, with a solution for the situation of the Kurds in Turkey,'” the report explains, while, however, noting that Ankara officials have made clear that Turkey's formal incorporation of an additional population of Kurds would be undesirable and politically inconceivable.

“An economic confederation with the Kurds of Iraq will be possible in the future, but it would have to be a de facto, not a de jure arrangement. We want Iraq to remain unified. Iraq is like a barometer of the ethnic and sectarian balance in the region. But economic incentives are possible. Via agreement with Baghdad, we can make our border with the Kurdish areas flexible and create an economic zone,” a Turkish official, nonetheless, told the ICG.

10 July 2009, Friday
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