CONCERN (IRAQ)

According to him, ‘It would be bad for Turkey, if the Kurds wouldn’t obtain what they want.’ He answered the question of what would happen when they ‘obtain what they want’: If the Turkish troops would not withdraw from northern Iraq, then they would do everything from major demonstrations to armed conflict. As if Turkish troops went there as ‘invaders.’ He forgets that the real invader is the United States with whom the Kurds cooperate against the Arabs and Turkmen. He talks about Iraq’s territorial integrity and says that they don’t want independence but a federative system and that the income from Iraqi oil should be shared by all regions in the country. Let alone making Kirkuk a Kurdish city, they suppose to make Kirkuk a place, which would jointly governed by the Turkmen, Arabs, Syrians and Kurds and give it a special status like Vatican in Italy. The Arabs however settled in the region during Saddam’s reign should go back to the places where they come from. He doesn’t on the other hand talk about the Kurdish gravestones they placed in recent months from other regions to the cemetery in Kirkuk to prove that the city had an age long Kurdish majority.

It is really deplorable that a country which couldn’t complete its ‘nationalization’ was invaded by the US and Britain. It is very difficult to form a state where bilateral splitting takes place between Arabs and Kurds; and Shiites and Sunnis and also adding the 2.5-3 million Turkmen. It is much more difficult if you consider US and Britain’s plans on oil. In this situation Turkey has a more responsibility than it supposed to have. It is the one which should have a say more than any other country. Because an Iraq based on a unified nation state instead of a fragmented Iraq based on ethnic origins and sects concerns its neighbor Turkey more that any other country. Furthermore a part of the region was taken from Turkey during the Lausanne Treaty with the Turkish population living there. Will the US and Britain show concern for the region instead of Turkey? Then Turkey has to say that ‘I am also in.’“