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Revue de Presse-Press Review-Berhevoka Çapê-Rivista Stampa-Dentro de la Prensa-Basin Ôzeti talk directly to the Iraqi Kurds of the KRG on the issue. It insisted on the Iraqi government in Baghdad as its interlocutor although the area is beyond the writ of the central administration and firmly in the hands of the Kurds. So the Turkish soldiers were handed over by an official Iraqi government delegation, flown in on an MNF plane by Gen Pe¬ traeus. Although the KRG had clearly done the legwork in persuading the PKK to give the soldiers up and acted as the first link in fcljetltasljiiigtoHjJtost Nov 5 ,2007 By: Nechirvan Barzani The Washington Post WASHINGTON, When President Bush and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdo¬ gan meet today to discuss ongoing conflict between the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and Turkey, we in the Kurdistan Regional Government of Iraq (KRG) will be listening with hope. We welcome this meeting. The only solution to this deca¬ des-old problem lies in diplomacy. Let me be clear: The KRG is, and will remain, fully prepared to find a long-term solution to this problem. To this end, we propose talks among Ankara, Baghdad, Arbil and Washington. This is a transnational issue, complicated by ethnic ties, and no party can find a solution on its own. We will sit down at any time with anyone who seeks a negotiated, diplomatic resolution. We must discard the rhetoric of violence and recognize that a military response to the current crisis would be a disaster for everyone except the PKK. We in the Kur¬ distan region of Iraq would be slowed on our path to peace, democracy and prospe¬ rity; the Turkish army would become bogged down in a bloody and unproduc¬ tive struggle against the PKK outside its borders; the United States and Western allies would become estranged from a vital NATO ally; and the economies and peoples of the region -- particularly Tur¬ key, Syria, Iran and Iraq would suffer. We have tried to explain to our Turkish friends that we want only peace and coo¬ peration with them. Our region depends heavily on investment and trade with Turkey. The great majority of foreign businesses operating here are Turkish, nearly all of our construction is done by Turkish contractors, we receive much of our electricity from Turkey and well over 75 percent of our imports arrive via Tur 42 the chain, both Baghdad and the Ameri¬ cans were demonstrating to the Turks that they could deliver, as they were under strong pressure to do. Since its overriding concern was to try to avert the threatened Turkish incursion - which it fears would be directed as much against itself as against the PKK - the KRG was happy to let the central Iraqi govern¬ ment preside over the handover, despite its negligible involvement in the release. That casts the crisis as one between Tur¬ key and Iraq, not Turkey and the Iraqi Kurds. An invasion could thus be por¬ trayed as a threat to Iraq's stability, not just the KRG. There are times when it suits the indepen¬ dent-minded Iraqi Kurds to cling to the Baghdad government. This was one of them. Whether it will prove a lasting trend remains to be seen. The timing of the release was probably no coincidence. It gave US President George W Bush something new and positive to point to when he met an angry Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in Washington the following day. Kurdistan's Hope for Talks key. Why would we provoke Turkey into a military action that would severely da¬ mage our economy? The history of this conflicted part of the world carries a message: Problems such as the PKK cannot be solved through mili¬ tary means. For decades the government of Saddam Hussein tried to liquidate the Kurdish people by violence, at a tremen¬ dous price for both sides. We ourselves fought against the PKK in the late 1990s with help from the Turkish military, and 10 years later we again find ourselves at a crisis point. The mountains inside our region and in Turkey have protected the PKK for decades, and there is little reason to believe that new military actions would be any more successful than past attemp¬ ts. Problems for which military solutions are sought here seem to have a way of never getting resolved. We have condemned and will continue to condemn the PKK for its unwarranted attacks in Turkey. We insist that its mem¬ bers lay down their arms immediately. We do not allow them to operate freely, contrary to what some have suggested. Turkey, with its substantial military capa¬ bility, has not been able to eradicate the PKK within its own borders, yet some Turks inexplicably expect us to be suc¬ cessful with far fewer capabilities and resources. Just as we ask the Turks to seek a peace¬ ful resolution, so must the PKK abandon its failed strategy of armed conflict. Di¬ plomacy and dialogue must be given a chance. With time, patience and stability, we believe that peaceful change can oc¬ cur. Just 10 years ago the PLO and the IRA were considered terrorist organiza tions. Today they have begun a process of transformation and are working within the political arena. Can such a transformation take place within the PKK? We cannot be certain. But we do know that military action will only radicalize the situation further, and violence will surely breed more violence. We want peace along our border with Turkey. We want to cooperate on econo¬ mic, social and cultural issues. We want to be a good neighbor and to exercise our responsibilities as good neighbors. Our successful efforts in cooperation with Ankara and Baghdad to secure the release of Turkish soldiers demonstrate our sin¬ cere desire to find peaceful solutions to the problem. We will continue taking concrete steps to improve the security environment at the border. But the Tur¬ kish government needs to overcome its refusal to talk to us as neighbors. The Kurdistan region is the only part of Iraq where peace and development have prospered since the liberation of 2003, and we are the constitutionally recognized regional government in the area. We have come a long way both economically and politically. But much more work remains. We have chosen to become part of a fede¬ ral Iraq and will uphold that commitment. We threaten no one as we move toward greater development. We hope that we can extend the hand of friendship to Tur¬ key and work together to find solutions to this crisis that will lead to long-term stabi¬ lity and peaceful relations. Nechirvan Barzani is prime minister of the Kurdistan of Iraq. Regional Government
Revue de Presse-Press Review-Berhevoka Çapê-Rivista Starnpa-Dentro de la Prensa-Basin Ôzeti THEY INDEPENDENT 05 November 2007 Bv Patrick Cockburnin Arbil Turkish Kurd guerrillas are leaving Iraqi Kurdis¬ tan for Iran in order to avoid an attack by the Turkish army according to a former leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party, the PKK. Osman Ocalan, brother of the imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, said: "the PKK has decrea¬ sed its forces in Iraqi Kurdistan and they are mo¬ ving to Iran. It is part of PKK tactics that when they feel pressure in one country they move to another." President George Bush and the Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, are to meet today in Washington to discuss what can be done about the PKK in Iraqi Kurdistan, from which it has been staging attacks on Turkish army units. The news that the PKK is moving its mobile fighters into Iranian Kurdistan - where they have escalated attacks on Iranian government forces -further complicates any action against the guerrillas. Mr Ocalan was at the top of Turkey's most wanted list until he left the PKK because he had fallen in TIME NOV. OS. OS. 2007 By Andrew Lee Butters Even on a normal day, Ibrahim Khalil, the complex straddling Turkey and Kurdishcontrolled northern Iraq, is a rather unusual international border crossing. Although it is an entry point into Iraq, there are no Iraqi soldiers, no Iraqi flags, and seemingly no Iraqi federal officials. Instead, the Iraqi side is controlled by the Kurdistan Regional Go¬ vernment, which enforces its own customs and immigration policies, enforced at check¬ points manned by Kurdish peshmerga figh¬ ters under the flag of Kurdistan a red, white, and green tricolor with a golden sun. Viewed from Turkey, these trappings of autonomy are a worrying prelude to an inde¬ pendent Kurdish state, a prospect to which Turkey with its own restive Kurdish mino¬ rity is implacably hostile. Turkish soldiers often harass Kurds crossing at Ibrahim Kha¬ lil, according to Iraqi Kurdish border security officials. They confiscate books or documents that use the word "Kurdistan", deny passage to women called Kurdistan a common female first name and to Kurds of foreign nationality whose passports list "Kurdistan" as a place of birth. Turkey's latent hostility towards Iraqi Kur¬ distan has grown more active following last month's killings of about 40 Turks, mostly soldiers, by fighters of the Kurdish Workers Party, or PKK, a militant group of Turkish Kurds at war with the Turkish state (and branded a terrorist organization by the U.S. and EU). Turkey accuses Iraqi Kurdish lea¬ ders of allowing the PKK to maintain bases in northern Iraq as part of a greater Kurdish national agenda. (Iraqi Kurds say they are helpless against a hardened guerilla group Former leader of Kurd rebels reveals retreat into Iran love with a woman who was a fellow PKK fighter. PKK rules forbade relationships between guerrillas, so they fled the mountains in 2004, where he had lived for 18 years, in order to marry. As a founder member of the PKK and the brother of its revered leader, Mr Ocalan is well informed about the actions and intentions of the organisation. In an interview in Arbil he estimated the total strength of the PKK guerrillas at just under 7,000. "There are 2,750 fighters in Turkey," he said. "A further 2,500 are in the border areas of Iraq and 1,500 are in Iran." It is the PKK's war in Iran, where there is a Kurdish minority of four million, that is escalating. "In the last six months the PKK has started a war against Iran." "There are more and more fighters in Iranian Kurdistan and the Iranian Kurds support the PKK strongly." The shift of part of the PKK into Iran to evade a Turkish military operations and to attack Iranian forces faces the US with a problem. Ameri¬ ca condemns the PKK when it is killing Turkish soldiers in Turkey as "terrorists", but has not similarly denounced the section of the PKK, known as PJAK, which has killed as many as 150 Iranian soldiers and police in Iran. Iran claims that the PKK receives covert support from the US. The PKK is skilful in exploiting the fact that the 25 million Kurds in the Middle East have no state of their own, but are spread across eastern Turkey (where they number 15 million), northern Iraq (five million), Iran (four million) and Syria (one million). "In this instance the partition of Kurdistan works in our interests," Mr Ocalan said. One reason for the intensification of PKK attacks on the Turkish army is the movement's concern about the health of its leader, Abdullah Ocalan, impriso¬ ned on the Turkish island of Imrali in the Sea of Marmara. "The Turks want to kill Apu [Abdullah's nickname]," he said of his brother. "He can't brea¬ the very well." The Turks Are Coming! Oh, They're Already Here that Turkey itself has failed to defeat in over 20 years of war Turkey rejects these claims of helplessness, pointing out that the Iraqi Kurdish authorities have not even acted to cut off supply lines to the guerrilla move¬ ment's camps.) Amid rising tension, the Turks have threatened cross-border military action against the PKK, and also to close their side of the Ibrahim Kalil border cros¬ sing as punishment. But on a recent road trip through the moun¬ tains of northern Iraq along the Turkish border, it was easier to find Turkish soldiers than Kurdish rebels. The Turkish army main¬ tains at least four bases inside northern Iraq as a result of an agreement with Saddam Hussein after the American no-flight zone created a power vacuum in the region during the 1990s. In the town of Barmani, the Turks have a base with 35 tanks, and are repairing a disused air strip and building up troop levels, according to Iraqi Kurdish intelligence officers. But this is no invasion: The Turks supply and man these stations simply by sending uniformed soldiers through the Ibrahim Khalil border on buses. While the Turks drive their tanks through Barmani in broad daylight once a week, the PKK guerillas are more elusive. Although the Turkish army claims that the PKK is using northern Iraq as a staging ground for attacks inside Turkey, the PKK's main bases are in the Qandil mountains, near the border with Iran and beyond the easy reach of a large Turkish force. The few PKK bases near the Turkish border are also difficult to reach, located long distances on single-track dirt roads high in classic insurgency country. One camp that's home to some 300 fighters in a ravine carved by the cold blue waters of the lower Khabour river looked like a beautiful place for an invading army to die. Turkish incursions into northern Iraq are unlikely to have much effect on either PKK fighters hiding there, or on those inside Turkey where the PKK claims to have twice as many fighters as it does in Iraq. The harsh mountainous terrain and the dispersal of the PKK makes it unlikely that the Turkish army will stage a major invasion this year and risk being caught in the moun¬ tains with winter fast approaching. Still, the mere threat of Turkish action has had an effect: The last stable part of Iraq no longer feels quite the safe haven it had become for thousands of refugees from the civil war in the rest of the country. "We fled from Bagh¬ dad, and now we are afraid of the Turks," said Mary Toma, a Christian refugee from the Dora neighborhood of Baghdad who has taken shelter with her husband and two teenage daughters in the mountain village of Gededky, within artillery range of Turkey. "Where should I go? What should I do?" she asked. And the showdown has also reminded Kur¬ dish leaders how dependent they remain, despite the trappings of independence, on their patrons in Washington, who are wor¬ king to diffuse the crisis, and on the govern¬ ment in Baghdad, which leapt to the defense of the Kurdish region. And since many Kur¬ dish observers suspect that Iraqi Kurdish independence not just the PKK is the target of Turkey's efforts, the Turks may have already won this skirmish in the battle of northern Iraq. 43
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