Show them death and they will love the fever
"There is no such place", the Turkish intelligence officer told my son earlier this month. He was going through our luggage at the Turkish end of the Habur bridge that separates Turkey from northern Iraq, and had found a chess set, with the place of origin, "Kurdistan" carved into it. After initially insisting we return the set to Iraq, he loaned Andrew a screwdriver to gouge out the offending word.
Fifty meters away from the Turkish intelligence post, at the other end of the bridge, is a sign that reads "welcome to Kurdistan of Iraq". The operative question is how long the "of Iraq' will be there. The Iraqi flag does not fly at the border crossing or anywhere else in Iraqi Kurdistan (a pre-1991 version of the flag does fly on a few public buildings in the part of Kurdistan controlled by the PUK). The Kurdistan flag, a green-white-red tricolor and with a bright yellow sun, is ubiquitous. The Kurdistan government--not the authorities in Baghdad--controls the Habur crossing. There are no central government offices in Kurdistan and the Kurdistan government does not allow the Iraqi army to send its forces into the region.
And, should there be any doubt about where all this is heading, the people of Kurdistan voted in an advisory referendum on Iraq's election day on whether Kurdistan should remain part of Iraq or be independent. Two million people voted (almost the same number as in the regular ballot) and 97 percent chose independence.
Andrew's defaced backgammon board was a gift from the PUK leader, Jalal Talabani, who headed the united Kurdish list in Iraq's January 30 elections. With 26 percent of the seats in the Iraq National Assembly, the Kurds are an indispensable partner to Sistani's Shi'ite list, which won a narrow majority. Effectively, all important National Assembly decisions require a two-thirds majority, meaning if the Shi'ite list is going to form a government--or write a constitution--it must have Kurdish support.
The Kurds have already declared the price of their support: any constitution must codify the current level of Kurdistan independence. Kurdistan will run its own affairs (financed by a proportionate share of Iraq's federal budget), keep its own armed forces, own and manage its own oil, control its international borders, and be totally free from Baghdad interference. This includes, as KDP leader Massoud Barzani stated in a recent New York Times interview, a constitutional ban on the presence of the Iraqi National Army in Kurdistan.
And the Kurds want the oil-rich province of Kirkuk attached to Kurdistan. Their claim was substantially bolstered by the provincial elections which gave a pro-Kurdistan list (that included Turkmens, Arabs, and Christians) more than 80 percent of the vote.
The Kurds also expect to share power in Baghdad, not only to affirm their status with the Arabs as one of Iraq's two nations, but also because they believe a major role in Baghdad is key to securing and safeguarding a separate Kurdistan. As part of a deal to install a Shi'ite as prime minister, the Kurds insist that they get the presidency, and their candidate is Jalal Talabani. It will be a fitting irony that Iraq's first ever freely chosen head of state--indeed arguably the first freely chosen leader in the territory that is now Iraq since Adam was there alone--is a Kurd.
Like the military man we encountered at the border, some Turks are in denial about the new reality in Iraq. But, overall, Turkey's response to emerging Kurdistan has been sophisticated. Many Turks--both close to Erdogan's government and, more surprisingly in the military/intelligence/diplomatic establishment known as the "deep state"--see opportunity as well as peril in developments in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Kurdish nationalism in Iraq is a fact, and Turkey's ability to influence the drive for statehood (whether merely de facto or recognized) is minimal. Turkey has no meaningful military option. A large scale armed intervention would confront more than 100,000 well armed peshmerga operating on their own terrain (a far more formidable force than the Turkish military faced in a 15 year war against the PKK in southeast Turkey), would shatter relations with the United States and kill Turkey's hopes of joining the European Union. An economic boycott is a double edged sword that would also destroy Turkey's lucrative trade with Iraq. Closing the border would inflict particular pain on Kurdish southeast Turkey where popular sympathy is solidly behind the Iraqi Kurds.
Separatist sentiment among Turkey's Kurds has sharply declined not only with the military defeat of the PKK but also with the prospect that all of Turkey--including the southeast--might join the European Union. Wrong steps on Iraq--particularly those that compromise EU accession or indeed the substantial advances made on Kurdish rights in Turkey as a result of that process--could reignite nationalist sentiment among Turkey's Kurds.
While the rhetoric out of Ankara is sometimes threatening, Turkey has maintained cordial relations with Kurdistan's leaders since 1991. Indeed, of all Iraq's new leaders, the Kurds are the ones Ankara knows the best. The Kurds appreciate Ankara's role in establishing and maintaining the safe haven that enabled a separate Kurdistan to survive--and later thrive--during Saddam Hussein's time. Turgut Ozal, the Turkish president who opened the door in Ankara to the Iraqi Kurds and who pushed the reluctant George H.W. Bush to establish the safe haven, is revered among Iraq's Kurdish leaders.
The Iraqi Kurds have shrewdly cultivated Turkish business and investment in their region. Turkish companies are ubiquitous--creating a bottle water plant, building an airport, and even establishing a brewery. A Turkish company, Genel Enerji, won the first production-sharing contract awarded by the Kurdistan Regional Government to develop the Taq-Taq oil field--a venture strongly supported by the Turkish government.
Enlightened commentators in Turkey note that Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan have a lot in common, and not just shared bonds of ethnicity. The Iraqi Kurds have the same western and secular orientation that defines the modern Turkish state. Instead of being seen as subversive, many Turks--including in the deep state itself--now view Iraqi Kurdistan as a potential ally, a bulwark against a militant Islamic Iraq.
One practical consequence of Kurdistan's drive for independence is Ankara's silence on the issue of federalism in Iraq, which just two years ago was proclaimed publicly to be unacceptable. As the Kurdish proverb goes: "Show them death and they will love the fever".
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- Published 24/2/2005
