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Reports From Iraq > Thur., Mar. 4, 2004
The Other Occupation of Iraq (Part One)
A Turkish soldier watches the traffic from his sentry
point in downtown Arbil |
ARBIL, IRAQ -- Looking at the faces of the troops behind the
razor wire-fenced four-floor military compound in the center
of the Northern Iraqi city of Arbil, at least one fact becomes
immediately apparent: its not just George Bush and his "coalition
of the willing" that are occupying Iraq. The man in the
watch-tower is Turkish and so is his commanding officer. But
they're not in the mood to talk:
"We don't have any time to talk to you now and we won't
in the future," the commander screams in Turkish through
a small iron window at the compound throwing my press card
into the dirt. He won't give his name. He waves his arms:
"Get lost! I never want to see you again." With
that, he slams his iron window shut.
These troops have reason to be defensive. They're unwanted
guests in Iraq. This fall, the US-appointed Iraqi Governing
Council refused to accept 10,000 Turkish soldiers approved
by Ankara and local Kurdish authorities have ordered this
garrison closed. But the Turkish military keeps it open.
A little bit of background is in order.
When the United States, Britain, and France carved out a
Kurdish safe haven in North Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War,
power was split between the two Kurdish leaders, Masoud Barzani's
Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) -- which got the western
part of North Iraq bordering Turkey and Syria -- and Jalal
Talabani, whose Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) came to
control the eastern part of Iraqi Kurdistan which borders
Iran. The two sides got along well in the beginning, but tensions
quickly developed over who should receive revenue from the
diesel trade with Turkey and money from the United Nations'
oil for food program. A war erupted between the two sides
and an international force from America, Britain, France,
and Turkey stepped in to break up the fight.
When the conflict died down in 1998, the other troops left,
but the Turks stayed. "We have said to them 'thank you'
but please go," says Nachmad Abdulla, the Deputy Leader
of the PUK in the Kurdish Parliament in Arbil. "But they
don't respond. They don't say anything and when we ask America
to ask them to leave, America says nothing."
But while the Bush Administration hasn't joined Kurdish authorities
in demanding the Turkish troops leave, it has also raised
the ire of Ankara. Last June, American troops arrested two
plainclothes Turkish soldiers and accused them of spying and
while Kurdish officials are reluctant to say so on the record,
most of them privately say they believe Turkey uses its facility
in Arbil as a base for espionage operations.
Turkish leaders are concerned that if Kurds win permanent
autonomy in Iraq, their own Kurdish population -- which is
about three times as large -- will demand similar rights.
During last year's American invasion, the Turkish Army announced
it would invade Iraq on its own if Kurdish forces captured
the oil-rich city of Kirkuk.
This week Kurdish leaders at the negotiating table in Baghdad
renounced Kirkuk as a part of their autonomous area to be
patrolled by a "Kurdistan National Guard."
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