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Turkey opens a second
front
By Jean-Christophe Peuch
PRAGUE - In comments published in the
Istanbul-based Hurriyet daily on January 6, Turkish
Foreign Minister Yasar Yakis said that his country might
pursue a legal claim over Kirkuk and Mosul, the two
oil-rich former Ottoman cities that were ceded to Iraq
in the 1920s.
In the aftermath of World War I,
the victorious Allies secured the dismemberment of the
Ottoman Empire, confining it to Turkey's present
boundaries. The Treaty of Sevres in 1920, followed three
years later by the Treaty of Lausanne, confirmed
Turkey's new borders, with the exception of that with
Mesopotamia, as Iraq was then known, which was under
British mandate.
In 1926, following months of
arduous talks, the newly founded republic of Turkey
reluctantly relinquished its territorial claims over the
province that comprised Mosul and Kirkuk, which then
became an Iraqi possession. Under a three-party
agreement sealed in Ankara, Britain offered to
compensate Turkey with a 10 percent share in Iraq's oil
revenues over the next 25 years. Officially, Ankara
later waived its share in return for a onetime payment
of 500,000 pounds sterling.
In comments likely
to please Turkish nationalists, who insist that Ankara
was stripped of its rights at the time, Yakis said that
government experts are studying official documents to
see whether Ankara can legally claim rights over Kirkuk
and Mosul.
Baskin Oran, who teaches
international relations at Ankara University, told our
correspondent that recent research conducted in
government archives by Hikmet Ulugbay, a former state
minister in charge on the economy, has shed new light on
the 1926 agreement.
According to Oran, Ulugbay
discovered in the 1990s that Iraq had, in fact, made
some payments to Turkey until the early 1950s when
Ankara, eager to boost ties with Baghdad, called off the
oil deal. After the 1958 coup that toppled King Faisal
II of Iraq, Turkey reversed its decision and restored a
budget line for Iraq's fees. "In reaction to [the coup,]
Turkey put this [item back] on its national budget
again, and it [remained] there up until 1986. After
1986, we no longer see [any such budget line], because
then-president [Turgut] Ozal, in an effort to [boost
trade with Iraq], deleted the article altogether from
the budget. So, all this has to be studied," Oran said.
Whether these findings could serve as a basis
for Turkey to sustain its claim is unclear. Some
commentators have understood Yakis's remarks as an
indication that Ankara may attempt to bargain its
support for Washington's war plans in return for a stake
in the oil wealth of Iraq, which has the second-largest
proven reserves in the world after Saudi Arabia.
In an effort to defuse the controversy triggered
by the minister's comments, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the
chairman of Turkey's ruling Justice and Development
Party, denied on January 28 that Ankara covets Iraq's
oil fields. "We are in favor of Iraq's territorial
integrity. We do not want the Iraqi people to be denied
their rights. The natural wealth [of Iraq] belongs to
the Iraqi people," Erdogan said.
After the 1991
Gulf War, the United Nations decreed an oil-for-food
program under which Iraq was authorized to export a
limited amount of crude oil to finance the purchase of
humanitarian goods. Iraqi oil is reaching world markets
mainly through a pipeline linking Kirkuk to the Turkish
Mediterranean port of Ceyhan.
Two-and-a-half
years ago, the UN authorized the Turkish Petroleum
Corporation to drill two dozens wells in the Kirkuk area
under the oil-for-food program.
Turkey, which
says the Gulf War has cost its economy up to $40 billion
in lost revenues, has sought to restore trade ties with
Iraq. Analysts believe a new regional conflict could
cost Ankara up to $15 billion, but Turkish leaders
maintain the loss of income could amount to nearly twice
that figure.
Adding fuel to Ankara's concerns,
both the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank,
which are helping the government eliminate the
consequences of a recent financial crisis, have warned
that compensation reportedly envisaged by the US may be
insufficient to avert further economic turmoil.
Although Ankara may have an economic interest in
demanding a stake in Kirkuk and Mosul, which are among
Iraq's largest oil-producing areas, regional experts
believe that the prospects of industrial fallout are not
the main Turkish concern.
Erich Jan Zurcher
chairs the Turkish Studies Department at Leiden
University in the Netherlands. He told our correspondent
that, in his view, Yakis's remarks reflect Ankara's
traditional security concerns rather than any possible
economic ambitions. "The fact that these claims are now
put on the table, or at least that references are made
to them, purely [aims at] convincing the Americans that
the territorial integrity of Iraq should be maintained
and that there should be no option of a separate, or
independent, Kurdistan in [northern Iraq]," Zurcher
said.
Since the end of the Gulf War, two rival
Kurdish factions - the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP)
and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) - have been
controlling most of Iraqi Kurdistan, with the notable
exception of Kirkuk and Mosul.
Turkey has used
its alternatively good ties with the PUK and the KDP to
crush its own Kurdish separatist movement. For the past
decade or so, the Turkish Army has been conducting
cross-border operations into northern Iraq in pursuit of
guerrilla fighters of the now officially defunct
Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and has been maintaining
some troops in northern Iraq.
In Ankara, both
civilian and military leaders believe that US-led
strikes against Baghdad could prompt Iraqi Kurds to
proclaim their independence, thus reigniting separatism
in Turkey's own Kurdish southeast. Turkey also fears
that Washington may promise Iraqi Kurds some kind of
national recognition in return for their participation
in a war against Saddam Hussein's regime.
The US
is, in turn, reportedly seeking assurances from Turkey
that it will not attempt to seize Kirkuk and Mosul to
prevent the risk of a Kurdish state arising in northern
Iraq. Turkish leaders have said that they might order
troops into the area in the event of war, officially to
protect the Turkic minority living there.
Known
as Turkomans, this estimated 300,000-strong community is
concentrated around Kirkuk. Once the predominant ethnic
group in the area, the Turkomans consider Kirkuk their
main city and have hinted in the past that they could
attempt to set up an independent state should they feel
threatened by Iraq's Arabs and Kurds. Iraqi Kurds, in
turn, consider Kirkuk a historically Kurdish city.
Zurcher believes that Ankara may use its
historical claims over Mosul and Kirkuk and that the
presence of Turkomans there as a pretext to intervene in
northern Iraq. But he said this remains a reserve option
for the Turkish leadership. "I think this is a fallback
option and an attempt to put pressure on the Americans.
The preferred option for the Turkish government is to
keep Iraq united. As long as that happens, Turkey will,
I am sure, not put in any serious claims about the north
of Iraq, even though there is a [Turkic] minority living
in Kirkuk, precisely in the area where the oil is
produced. If, in the course of any war, the Kurds of
northern Iraq would claim independence, or would be
allowed de facto or de jure independence on the part of
the Americans, then this is certainly a second option.
But it is a very difficult one, and the Turkish
government, especially the Turkish armed forces, knows
all the risks involved," Zurcher said.
Unexpected though they were, Yakis's recent
remarks did not set a precedent. Many Turkish leaders
have, in recent years, revived the territorial
controversy with Baghdad.
In 1995,
then-president Suleyman Demirel suggested that Iraq's
northern boundary be revised so that Kirkuk and Mosul
became parts of Turkey. Although Demirel eventually
retracted, he failed to convince public opinion in Arab
countries that Ankara had no views over its former
Ottoman possessions. Yet, it seems that security
concerns rather than neo-imperialistic ambitions
prompted Demirel's remarks, which were made at a time
when northern Iraq was serving as a rear base for some
PKK fighters.
But Zurcher believes any Turkish
move to annex Kirkuk and Mosul would turn into a
nightmare for Ankara, if only because its volatile
Kurdish community would then grow by an estimated 30
percent. "Turkey already has a problem with perhaps 10
[million] or 12 million Kurds, and to occupy the Kurdish
parts of Iraq would add significantly to this problem.
So any [economic] gain to be made from the occupation of
the Kirkuk oil fields is offset by huge risks of
internal instability," Zurcher said.
The Turkish
parliament is due to debate this week on whether to
authorize the deployment of US troops on national
territory, thus ending weeks of uncertainty about
Ankara's support to Washington's war plans.
The
Pentagon would like to open a northern front against
Iraq to take the heat off a primary invasion from the
Persian Gulf area. But there could be other reasons
behind Washington's insistence on sending troops into
Iraq from the north.
On January 27, Western
media quoted unidentified US officials as saying that
such a move would allow the Pentagon to secure the
Kirkuk and Mosul oil fields. Managing Iraq's hydrocarbon
resources would reportedly help Washington funnel oil
proceeds into rebuilding the country after Hussein is
ousted.
Ankara University's Oran does not
believe in the possibility of an independent Kurdistan
emerging from the rubble of Hussein's regime. Nor does
he think the United States will let Iraqi Kurds take
control over Kirkuk and Mosul. "Even if there is an
autonomous Kurdistan, the fact that the rest of Iraq
[would] never be able to make a living without these oil
fields makes it impossible that they will be given to
[an] autonomous Kurdistan," Oran said.
Oran
believes that, in all likelihood, Kirkuk and Mosul will
remain under Baghdad's central control. But whether oil
proceeds will be effectively used to reconstruct Iraq
remains an open question, he added.
Copyright
(c) 2003, RFE/RL Inc. Reprinted with the permission of
Radio Free Europe/Radio
Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington DC
20036
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