Kurds brace for Turks

As the US and Turkey approach a deal that would allow the US to insert troops and equipment into northern Iraq across Turkey's border, Kurdish leaders are ratcheting up their opposition to a Turkish military role in the area.

"Any [Turkish] intervention under whatever pretext will lead to clashes," warns Hoshyar Zebari, a senior official of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), which administers the western portion of northern Iraq. "It would not be helpful," he adds with a touch of understatement, "for the image and reputation of the US, Britain, and many of these countries that want to help the Iraqi people to see two of their allies - Turkey and the Kurdish parties - at each other's throats."

Mr. Zebari's comments, delivered at a press conference yesterday in Arbil, the capital of the Kurdish-run autonomous region in northern Iraq, constitute yet more trouble for US officials attempting to ready a second front against Iraq. Until now, Kurdish officials have criticized US plans to allow the Turks a military role without hinting at the potential for violence.

The problem for the Kurds - whose interests have never ranked high with their neighbors or distant powers - is that Turkish cooperation likely will trump Kurdish discomfort in the eyes of US war planners. The Turks are demanding billions of dollars in cash and loan guarantees, which the US is prepared to provide, and a military role in the invasion (see story).

Military issues are still being discussed, said Turkish Foreign Minister Yasar Yakis yesterday. Turkey wants to have troops in northern Iraq under its control - as opposed to US command - and to supervise the armament and disarmament of the Kurdish groups to avoid the weapons falling into the hands of Turkish Kurdish rebels.

The latter element particularly rankles Kurdish leaders, who see no reason to disarm before anyone else does.

"The price we will pay to get the second front is to let the Turks in," says Henri Barkey, a Lehigh University political scientist and former State Department adviser on Turkish and Kurdish affairs.

Letting the Turks in will allow them a say in the evolution of the new Iraq, but it may also provoke Iran and other countries in the region that also have a stake in shaping the new state.

The US and Turkey appear close to agreement on a plan which includes provisions for tens of thousands of Turkish troops to enter northern Iraq during a US invasion. Turkey says the forces are needed to prevent Kurds from fleeing into Turkey and to protect members of Iraq's Turkmen minority, with whom Turks share linguistic and ethnic roots.

The Kurds say Turkey has another goal: To undermine the autonomy of the region the Kurds have governed for 12 years and prevent them from seizing control of Kirkuk, traditionally a predominantly Kurdish part of Iraq and the site of some of the country's most productive oil fields.

"People in northern Iraqi Kurdistan are more scared of the Turkish military than of Saddam," says Nasreen Sideek, minister of reconstruction and development in the KDP administration. A poll printed this weekend by an independent Kurdish newspaper indicated 83 percent of the residents of autonomous northern Iraq oppose Turkish "intrusion."

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