ANKARA, 25 August 2003 — As the region’s former colonial master, Turkey is claiming a historic duty to intervene in Iraq ahead of a debate today on sending troops there, while Kurdish leaders in the north of the occupied nation are vehemently against the deployment.
While a parliamentary vote on the deployment of troops in Iraq is not expected before mid-September, community leaders within Iraq have already been issuing their own warnings, and the issue has kicked off a fierce debate in Turkey where most of the population was against the US-led war.
“Turkey has major economic and political interests in Iraq,” Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said in an interview published on Saturday, adding that any deployment would number at least 10,000 troops — a huge increase on the tiny symbolic contingents sent by most other coalition partners.
Iraq was one of Turkey’s biggest trading partners before the 1991 Gulf War, but commercial relations between the two nations have dwindled since. The north of Iraq is also home to that country’s restive Kurdish minority and, according to Ankara, a hiding place for Turkish Kurdish rebels. As a result, Turkish commentators have been citing the fact that Iraq was for some 400 years under Turkish control, in the form of the Ottoman empire, until its collapse after World War 1. “These lands of the fatherland were in the past defended by our ancestors, we have today the duty to do the same,” read a recent editorial in the mass-market Hurriyet newspaper.
Turkish authorities believe that around 5,000 militants from the Kudistan Workers’ Party party, now known as Kadek, have sought refuge in the mountains that straddle Turkey’s border with Iraq.
Foreign Minister Gul has also said that Turkish soldiers would not be as exposed to attack as US troops, which have been subjected to daily, often deadly attacks over the past few weeks. “To the Iraqi people, a Turkish soldier is just not like a US one, we are not an enemy,” he said.
But some opinions on the ground differ. “Any regional forces that enter Iraq will stir up old history and will lead to a catastrophe for the Iraqi people and for the Americans in Iraq,” said community leaders in the hotspot town of Fallujah, west of the capital Baghdad. “We urge the Iraqi people to say no to Turkish forces entering Iraq,” they said. And in Kurdish-controlled territory further north the reaction was even more vehement. “We are against the presence of the Turkish army,” said top Iraqi Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani, noting the presence of some 3,000 Turkish troops based in northern Iraq was “enough.”
Turkey has had troops deployed in Iraqi Kurdistan since 1997, but soldiers sent to support the US-led reconstruction of the country would make their role official. Not only would Turkish troops be able to track down fighters from their own secessionist Kurdish minority, but they could also curb Iraqi Kurdish aspirations to an independent state.
While a meeting of Turkey’s government will discuss the matter today, the governing Justice and Development party already has the essential approval of Turkey’s powerful generals to send troops to Iraq. But Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan still has to convince his own lawmakers to support the measure. Turkish parliamentarians in March voted against allowing US troops to enter Iraq via Turkey, angering Washington. Despite widespread public disapproval of the ongoing occupation of Iraq, Ankara’s current opportunity to improve damaged relations with Washington while at the same time controllig the Kurds may be an opportunity too good to be missed.
No German Troops: Germany will not send troops to Iraq without a United Nations Security Council resolution that takes over the control of security in Iraq, Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said in Helsinki yesterday. After talks with his Finnish counterpart Erkki Tuomioja, he reiterated Germany had been opposed to the war against Iraq from the start.
