Revisiting the Kirkuk issue

I was only able to make a stopover in my homeland and now am at the other end of the epicenter of the political earthquake of the international system: Iraq. From Sulaymaniyah to Baghdad, from Kirkuk to Arbil. In the wake of last year’s war, Kirkuk erupted a few days before I arrived in this land to which I am addicted. As I emphasized in one of my earlier columns, the oil town of Iraq’s north, with its cosmopolitan structure the target of controversial, contradictory and irreconcilable claims of various Iraqi elements, was ostensibly tranquil but inherently volatile. Thus, the latest tension was no surprise for me or for anybody who knows the area and observes developments.

For the Americans, who are running the show in Kirkuk, following the war in Iraq Kirkuk was to shine as the multinational, democratic and functional model for the rest of Iraq to follow. It is an American laboratary experiment, an Iraqi microcosm demonstrating how a future Iraq might look like. The tranquillity and stability of Kirkuk is essential for the American authorities. Anything that is perceived as possibly jeopardizing this objective is met with a harsh American reaction, as in the two cases in 2003 that pitted two allies, the American military and the Turkish Special Forces, against each other, with much broader ramifications for Turkish-U.S. relations.

For the Kurds — both the Kurdistan Democracy Party (KDP) of Massoud Barzani and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) of Jalal Talabani — Kirkuk is the central city of Iraqi Kurdistan, historically, geographically and demographically. Therefore, while wanting to see a federal Iraq in which they would enjoy autonomy in a much more expanded territory than they had received in a March 11, 1970 accord with the central Baathist Baghdad regime, they simultaneously want to make Kirkuk the administrative center of their Kurdistani federal region. Furthermore, they have maximalist demands to have control over the Kirkuk underground: the oil!

For the Turkmens, Kirkuk is a Turkmen/Turkish town. It has always been so, and despite the demographic changes pushed forcefully by Saddam Hussein in order to Arabize the important oil center, it remained so, and even after the influx of displaced Kurds into the town, it remains so.

For Turkey, keeping Kirkuk away from Kurdish domination is an unwritten commitment and undeclared obligation made to its kinsmen, the Turkmens. But even more important than this ambigious moral commitment, it sees in the Kurdish domination of Kirkuk a huge step forward in attaining an eventual independent Kurdish state and the breakup of Iraq.

This possibility is always perceived as detrimental for Turkey’s security and for preserving its territorial integrity. Whether or not this is an unnecessary obsession for Turkey in the post-war historical period of Iraqi reconstruction is open to debate. Nonetheless, this is the well-entrenched official Turkish position, and this is the precise reason for the pursuance of a Turkish policy that was effectively pro-status quo, and thus implicitly even pro-Saddam. The focus was on preserving the territorial integrity of Iraq, and the sine qua non for this objective had been to stem any kind of Kurdish demand at any level.

As a matter of fact, the latest developments in Kirkuk run the danger of setting Iraqi Kurds and Turkmens — and above all, Iraqi Kurds and Turkey — on a collision course. This must be reversed before the point of no return is reached.

I will share my observations with TDN readers after discussing at length those prospects for the resolution of the Kirkuk case in the foreseeable future, especially in the wake of recent bloodshed and ongoing tension in Kirkuk, with Kurdish leaders, Turkmen personages and possibly with American authorities in Baghdad. Before that, let me present some information that may not be in wide circulation concerning the behind-the-scenes aspect of the Kirkuk events.

There should be no doubt that the Kurdish claims on Kirkuk are excessive, given the Turkmen/Turkish identity and the historic demography of the city. Nobody disputes the fact that the previous provincial territory and today’s countryside of Kirkuk is predominantly Kurdish. But the town itself was not, and most probably, is not, even now. The Sunni Arab clans in and around the city of Kirkuk and the Christian Assyrians had always constituted the minority, as they do now.

The Sunni Arab clans are known to be Saddam’s supporters, and a sub-district of Kirkuk, the town of Hawija, still has the reputation of being a Baathist bastion. They — Kirkuk’s Arabs — were pushed to stage an anti-Kurdish demonstration, making the Kurdish proposals of federation a pretext for their acts to bring the roof down on the American occupation. It might well be a concerted action in coordination with the rest of the Sunni resistance led by former regime stalwarts and religious die-hards.

The Turkmens have been pushed into cooperation with the Arabs through elements loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr, the young Shiite firebrand who is jockeying for power within the realm of the Iraqi Shiites. Muqtada is known to be fervently anti-American and enjoys the support of hard-liner Ayatollah Ha’eri in the Iranian religious center of Qom. There is a considerable Shiite element within the Turkmen population of Iraq. In particular, Tuzkhurmatu (50 miles south of Kirkuk) and Tel Afar, in the vicinity of Mosul, are overwhelmingly Turkmen Shiite towns. The southern outskirts of Kirkuk, called Tisin, is also predominantly Shiite Turkmen. Muqtada is active within this segment of the Iraqi Turkmen population and also found it opportune to exploit the Kurdish proposals of federation, including Kirkuk, in the Kurdistan federal zone in order to have and to consolidate a power base among the Shiite Turkmens.

Therefore, it is likely that the joint Turkmen-Arab demonstration against the Kurds that sparked violence was a product of an informal and implicit alliance between Muqtada’s Turkmen Shiites and pro-Saddam Arab Sunnites. That was open to provocation from the outset, and that is exactly what happened on the last day of 2003 and in the following days.

The Iraqi Turkmen Front (ITF), a protege of Turkey’s officialdom, was out of the loop. Now it wants to enter into the equation, capitalizing on the situation.

Turkey, with its centuries-old presence and experience in this region, is paradoxically naive and ill-informed about the intricacies of daily developments in Iraq.

This naivety and misperception presents a twofold danger for Turkey’s future:

1. Being dragged into the swamp of Iraqi politics, following only the invisible footprints of the Turkmens and with no knowledge of how to navigate;

2. Or, keen not to dive blindly into the Iraqi quagmire, choosing to remain a bystander with no impact on the reconstruction of its southern neighbor, which would lay the foundations of the new international system.

Both are undesirable for Turkey. There should be — and there already are — choices other than the aforementioned two.

Let’s dwell on them in the following days or weeks, after my encounters in Iraq…