On March 26, Gen. Hilmi Ozkok, chief of staff of Turkey’s armed forces, conceded to U.S. demands not to send additional troops into northern Iraq.
Earlier, it appeared to many, including Turkish officials, that a quid-pro-quo agree ment had been reached between Washington and Ankara to allow Turkish intervention in northern Iraq in exchange for letting U.S. and British warplanes fly over Turkey.
But as the Bush administration’s hopes for a swift war were dashed in southern Iraq, Washington feared the possibility of open warfare between the Turkish Army and U.S.-allied Kurdish groups in northern Iraq.
The Pentagon says it’s counting on the Kurdish groups and their
militias—now officially under U.S. military command—to aid
U.S. Special Forces troops in the north. So Turkish officials were
leaned on, and paid off with $1 billion in cash grants and loan
guarantees of $8.5 billion to cushion the economic trauma of
war.
(New York Times, March 26)
Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdo gan, in a televised address March
23, had said the U.S. and Turkey reached an agreement for Turkish
troops to deploy in a limited area, reportedly 19 kilometers,
skirting the border in northern Iraq.
(ChannelNewsAsia.com, March
24)
Their purpose, Erdogan said, was to pre vent tens of thousands of
refugees from flooding southern Turkey and to hunt down Kurdish
terrorists.
Now, according to General Ozkok, We have no desire to establish a
permanent buffer zone.
On March 21, the Turkish Parliament voted to allow U.S. overflights in
the war against Iraq. The vote came three weeks after the parliament
had rejected Wash ington’s plan to use Turkish bases to launch a
northern front
with 62,000 U.S. troops.
Erdogan, the ruling Justice and Dev elopment Party, and especially the Turkish military wanted to collaborate with the Pentagon. But popular opposition to the war, including massive street protests, made the rulers afraid to accept U.S. terms.
So a compromise-the overflights-was pushed through.
Turkish military leaders continued to deny that 1,000 commandos had crossed the border into Iraq on March 21-22. But a BBC World News correspondent stationed in the area and others asserted that the commandos did indeed enter Iraq. And some 50,000 heavily armed Turkish troops are poised along the border.
It’s unclear whether those commandos will be withdrawn. General Ozkok insisted that Turkey’s military reserved the right to send in additional forces, but would do so only under U.S. supervision.
Turkey’s government is among the biggest recipients of U.S. military aid. Washington has long supported its suppression of Kurds in southern Turkey.
From 1984 to 1999, the army carried out a bloody campaign aimed at destroying the pro-independence Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a group allied with Turkey’s communist movement. More than 30,000 people died—mostly civilians suspected of sympathizing with the PKK.
The Congress for Freedom and Democracy in Kurdistan (KADEK), successor to the outlawed PKK, still has strong support among Kurds in Turkey. KADEK has called for a spring uprising against both the Turkish regime and the U.S.-led war in Iraq.
Opposition to the war was a major theme March 21 during Kurdish new year celebrations in southern Turkey.
For months Kurdish people in northern Iraq have been voicing their opposition to Turkish military intervention. The Patri otic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), two bourgeois parties allied with the U.S. against the Iraqi government, warned of a shooting war between local Kurds and the Turkish military if Ankara was permitted to intervene.
Both groups are hostile to KADEK and have cooperated with U.S./Turkish repres sion of the left.
The Sunday Times of London reported March 23 that three days of arm-twisting meetings took place in Ankara just before the U.S./British assault began. These meet ings, under the auspices of U.S. special envoy and former Unocal oil company adviser Zalmay Khalilzad, aimed at clamping down on leaders of rival Kurdish and Iraqi opposition groups—many on the CIA’s payroll for years.
The PUK and KDP agreed to place their armed forces under direct U.S. command. (Reuters, March 18)
The interests of the U.S. and Turkish ruling classes in northern Iraq overlap considerably, and have nothing to do with securing rights and sovereignty for Kurdish people.
Both Washington and Ankara want to hunt down KADEK members thought to be hiding in the mountainous region.
U.S. officials assert that their primary goal is to secure two major oil centers, Kirkuk and Mosul, under Pentagon control.
The Bush administration doesn’t want Kurdish militias—even those dominated by the compliant PUK and KDP—to seize these areas, which remain under the control of the Iraqi government. U.S. companies don’t want to have to share control of the oil or how the profits are divvied up.
Both cities have faced heavy bom bardment since the war began. Kurdishmedia.com reported that hundreds of U.S. Special Forces troops began to arrive in the region March 22 at Bakrajo Airport near the town of Sulemani. More troops could be flown in from Jordan or the numerous U.S. bases in Central Asia.
Turkey doesn’t want these oil centers to come under Kurdish control, either. Ankara fears such an outcome would fuel demands for independence among Kurds in Iraq and Turkey, and could strengthen the forces of the revolutionary left.
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