GUL WARNS POWELL ON KIRKUK
One can’t help but notice that Gul didn’t mention Iraq’s Turkmen but rather put forth directly the reactions of the Arab world. This warning was issued before Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani proposed a draft federal constitution for northern Iraq. Barzani and Talabani are busy shifting Kurds from nearby small towns to Kirkuk so as to increase the Kurdish population of that city so it will be included it in the Kurdish federal region.
In his warnings, I think Gul, in a diplomatic way, wanted to tell his US counterpart the following: ‘The Kurdish groups are striving to change the city’s population makeup in their own favor. If you just sit and watch a city which is home to many ethnic groups being artificially populated by Kurds, then the Arab world will be against the US before even Turkey. Before Ankara, the Arabs would react against this fait accompli.’ In this sense, it is important that Gul used the term ‘a new Arab revenge.’ This was meant to remind Powell of the Arab world’s protests against US policy protecting Israel’s interests in the Middle East and that similar protests could arise in northern Iraq.
The Foreign Ministry made a similar statement on Dec. 25 saying that if Kurdish groups were sponsored by the US, then the Arabs who make up the majority of the Iraqi population would not approve of this.
Since the beginning of the Iraq war, Turkey has issued many similar messages on northern Iraq. The issues that Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Ugur Ziyal and other ministry officials brought to the table in their meetings with their US counterparts did not change. These were, not excluding the Sunnis, urgings to pay attention to the ethnic structure of Kirkuk and warnings that a federation based on ethnic division would lead to dangerous situations that could make the Middle East unstable. The US failed to listen to these warnings for nearly nine months, but now seems to have changed its tune. Let’s see whether the Washington be able to put the genie back into the bottle.”