Page 2 of 2 Iraqi Kurds play with Turkish
fire By M K Bhadrakumar
problematic
for Washington to square denial of
self-determination to Kurds with its stance over
Kosovo and with the democracy project in the
Middle East.
A rapidly growing community
of influential American public figures and
thinkers already stands convinced of the justice
(or expediency) of Kurdish national
self-determination. It includes Joseph Biden of
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, former
secretaries of state Henry
Kissinger and James Baker, president emeritus of
the Council on Foreign Relations Leslie Gelb,
former ambassador to the United Nations Richard
Holbrooke, former ambassador to Croatia Peter
Galbraith, and so on.
Also, on the ground,
things may already have begun heading toward a
partition of Iraq. As a result of the events of
1991-2003, there is a de facto half-independent
and de jure legal Kurdish state in northern Iraq.
Turkish diplomacy will, therefore, have to work
hard on the Bush administration to preserve the
territorial integrity of Iraq.
But there
can be no certainty still how things will develop.
Therefore, Turkey works closely with Iran and
Syria, which are equally affected by the security
implications of the emergence of an independent
Kurdish state. Turkey and Iran are seriously
consulting each other on cooperation in fighting
Kurdish terrorists (while the US remains
disinclined). Iran has announced that it will
readily provide logistical and combat support to
Turkey in the event of any military operations
inside northern Iraq.
On the plus side,
however, Ankara holds a major trump card insofar
as northern Iraq is economically dependent on
Turkey. Turkey is a major source of foreign
investment and foreign expertise for the economic
development of the region. According to the
Diyarbakr Chamber of Commerce, Turkey's exports to
northern Iraq, especially of food and building
materials, are expected to touch US$5 billion by
the end of the year. Turkish construction
companies have reportedly won contracts worth more
than $2 billion since 2003.
Interestingly,
Barzani's "presidential palace" in Irbil was built
by a Turkish company. Turkish companies have built
most of the modern symbols of northern Iraq's
Kurdish identity, such as television networks,
international airports and universities. Irbil and
Sulaymaniyah are linked by flights to Istanbul.
The Turkish Mediterranean resort of Antalya is
soon to be connected by air to these two Kurdish
airports. Turkish business people with close links
to the political class in Ankara have done
remarkably well in Barzani's domain in northern
Iraq. Ironically, a number of Turkish business
groups that have done exceedingly well in northern
Iraq are known to be close to Turkey's opposition
nationalist party.
The $250 million Erbil
International Airport contract was won by the
Mak-Yol Cengiz Common Enterprise, belonging to the
prominent Cebi family from the Black Sea region,
which has close links with Erdogan. The
expectation is that Turkish companies are poised
to corner the lion's share of projects worth $15
billion planned in the northern Iraq region over
the next three years.
Thus it is
simplistic to regard, from the Turkish
perspective, northern Iraq's march to progress and
development under a Kurdish flag as a zero-sum
game. The transport route for Kirkuk's oil
exports, which will be the principal source of
income for the Kurdish authorities, will itself be
via the pipeline that runs through Turkish
territory to its Mediterranean port of Ceyhan.
Turkey's real concern ought to be that Arab Iraq
remains distinctly unstable and that it is a
remote possibility that, any time in the
foreseeable future, a functioning political system
can emerge in Baghdad into which the Kurds could
integrate, even if they wanted to.
Indeed,
the Turkish establishment has had extensive
dealings with Barzani over the years, especially
during the 1990s when the US and Britain from
Turkey enforced the so-called North Watch over
Iraq. Barzani received hundreds of millions of
dollars from Turkish companies by way of a
"customs duty" imposed on the massive
transportation of Iraqi oil across the Turkish
border (with Ankara's connivance) in blatant
violation of United Nations sanctions against
Saddam Hussein's Iraq all through the 1990s. Then,
as now, there was always a Turkish security
presence inside northern Iraq.
The fact
is, a landlocked Iraqi Kurdistan could derive
benefits out of Turkish goodwill or could suffer
immensely if goodwill is lacking. As things stand,
an Iraqi Kurdish political entity can exist,
arguably, only as a Turkish protectorate.
Kurdistan is often mentioned as a potential
geopolitical base for the US in the region. But
that doesn't mean that the US has the same
interests as Kurdistan.
The US has its own
strategic interests in the region and is, and will
remain, heavily influenced by the Arab countries,
which oppose Kurdish independence, and Turkey.
Besides, the region is a knot of problems. That's
how Kurds always ended up as small change in the
big political game of the region.
There is
an extraordinary passage in the recent book The
End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a
War without End by Peter Galbraith, adviser to
the Kurdish regional government. Galbraith reveals
how Kurdish leaders themselves are modest in their
expectations of Kurdish autonomy but external
actors significantly influence them.
Galbraith said, "I realized that the
Kurdish leaders had a conceptual problem in
planning for a federal Iraq. They were thinking
[circa 2003] in terms of devolution of power -
meaning that Baghdad grants them rights. I urged
that the equation be reversed. In a memo I sent
[Iraq's Kurdish deputy prime minister] Barham
[Salih] and [Prime Minister of the KRG] Nechirvan
[Barzani] in August, I drew a distinction between
the previous autonomy proposals and federalism:
'Federalism is a bottom-up system. The basic
organizing unit of the country is the province or
state' ...
"In a federal system, residual
power lies with the federal unit (that is, state
or province); under an autonomy system it rests
with the central government. The central
government has no ability to revoke a federal
status or power: it can revoke an autonomy
arrangement ...
"The constitution should
state that the constitution of Kurdistan, and laws
made pursuant to the constitution, is the supreme
law of Kurdistan. Any conflict between laws of
Kurdistan and the laws of the constitution of Iraq
shall be decided in favor of the former. These
ideas eventually became the basis of Kurdistan's
proposals for an Iraq constitution."
In
short, Kurdish leaders in northern Iraq sought
Galbraith's help in 2003 for structuring Iraq's
federal system of government, but instead he
convinced them about a confederal system of
government! Turkey ought to worry now that
Galbraith might proceed to convince a hopelessly
distracted Bush administration, too, that the
Iraqi state was an aberration of history.
M K Bhadrakumar served as a
career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service for
more than 29 years, with postings including
ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-98) and to Turkey
(1998-2001).
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