Ankara’s Nightmare: A Kurdish State “on The Other Side”—In Northern Iraq

By Jon Gorvett

Just outside the village of Ugrak, 37.5 miles east of Diyarbakir on the road to the Iraqi border, a burnt-out, bullet-riddled car sits slowly rusting by the roadside. Last October, its four occupants were caught in a murderous crossfire here and killed by people who reportedly once had been their neighbors.

While the story of what happened here is in many ways quite specific to the village, it also appears to shed a wider light on Turkey’s southeast—and Ankara’s deep concern, in late February of this year, of what might happen in the event of a U.S.-led invasion of neighboring Iraq.

With Turkish government officials apparently in deadlock with Washington over a resolution allowing U.S. troops to deploy in Turkey and open a “second front” in northern Iraq, it seemed evident as this article was being written that, while the deadlock had begun over economics, it was ending up to be over military and political control. It also was becoming increasingly evident that the objects of that control were the Kurds.

The four people killed near Ugrak had fled the village during the height of the war between the Turkish army and guerrillas of the Kurdish Workers Party, the PKK. In this struggle, officially some 35,000 people, mainly ethnic Kurds, were killed. Although the number of injured is largely unknown, there are official statistics for the numbers of people displaced—around 350,000. Kurdish groups put the figure at over two million.

In Ugrak, the fighting divided the village. Many chose to flee, while others were forced to. They left behind their homes, fields and possessions to become internal refugees, often fleeing to the cities. As a result of the conflict, the population of the local capital, Diyarbakir, swelled by some 60 percent, according to Turkish government statistics.

Last October, however, encouraged by government claims that the region had returned to peace and that it was time to go back, the four mentioned above headed home. Under the existing provisions, those wishing to go back first must get permission from the regional governor. This done, the four were then provided with an armed escort and taken to Ugrak. Within a few minutes of the escort’s departure, however, they had all been shot dead.

Four other villagers were arrested for the murder, all of them village guards. These are local, ethnic Kurds recruited by the Turks to garrison some of the hundreds of isolated villages that dot the southeast of the country. Given a gun and around $165 a month, some 75,000 of these guards were placed in charge of large areas of what rapidly became abandoned countryside.

“We stayed,” said one village guard, who would not be named, in the village of Aksoy, near Mardin. “Those who left would not fight for their land against the terrorists. If they didn’t fight, they were supporters of the terrorists.”

In Ugrak, the four returning in their car that October day were also members of a rival family within the village to the village guards who now controlled it. In fact, a blood feud had existed between them for generations. In addition, the family that stayed had had the run of all the village land for the best part of two decades. It wasn’t something they were going to give up just like that.

On Dec. 25 the local court released the four accused of the murders pending the scheduling of a proper trial. When this will take place is unknown.

Just over the hills from Ugrak is Iraq. The border has long been heavily militarized, but many of those in the village have relatives “on the other side.”

This is Ankara’s current nightmare. Briefly put, it is that a U.S.-led invasion will result in the collapse of any remaining control in Iraq by Saddam Hussain’s ruling Ba’athists. Northern Iraq, the region above the 36th parallel patrolled by U.S. and British warplanes, already is under the de facto control of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK)—and, in some small part, by the Islamist Al-Anshar and the remnants of the PKK, now renamed and reorganized as the Kurdistan Freedom and Democracy Congress (KADEK). The collapse of the north’s remaining pro-Baghdad forces, positioned in and around the oil rich city of Kirkuk, would, it is feared, lead to a Kurdish takeover and a declaration of Iraqi Kurdish independence.

The creation of an independent Kurdistan “on the other side” would likely act as a major magnet for Turkey’s millions of ethnic Kurds. This is particularly so given the failure of what attempts there have been since the effective end of the guerrilla war in 1999 to redress regional grievances—or even allow people to return to their homes.

Ankara argues that it cannot allow a Kurdish state to be established. There has been almost no debate, however, over what that means. Since the 1990s, some 4,000 to 5,000 Turkish troops have been rotated through northern Iraq, although their presence there is officially denied by Turkey and by the Iraqi Kurdish factions. Their numbers are now much higher. Two army corps are stationed in the southeast, one in Diyarbakir, the other in Van. Both had received orders by early January to begin preparations for a more forward deployment. The exact figures have not been determined, but it seems likely that some tens of thousands of Turkish troops will advance into northern Iraq once the war starts.

The deadlock with the U.S. was in many ways over these troops, not the amount of money Turkey would be given in grants or soft loans to compensate it for economic losses caused by the war. The argument was over who would command the Turks, how many there would be, how freely they would be able to move around northern Iraq, whether they would have control over any weapons distributed to the Kurdish factions to fight Baghdad, and whether they would be expected to fight any of Saddam Hussain’s forces themselves. The other question was over the role of the U.S. troops that would also be deployed—some 62,000 being the number quoted in Ankara in late February—and who would occupy Kirkuk.

At that time the answers seemed to be that the Turks would more or less have a free hand, be under Turkish, not U.S., command, with the U.S. most likely occupying Kirkuk and fighting Saddam, while the Turks would not confront Baghdad’s forces at all.

Instead, then, many Iraqi Kurds began to ask, who would the Turkish troops confront?

It was not a new question: in the months of build-up to the conflict, it often has been asked in Turkey and northern Iraq alike. Were all these Turkish troops really necessary to mount what officially was to be a humanitairian operation to prevent refugees flooding into Turkey, as had happened in 1991 at the end of the Kurdish uprising that followed the Gulf war?

By the end of February, the Iraqi Kurds seemed in little doubt about what the true purpose of such a Turkish incursion would be. On Feb. 25, a meeting of the Kurdish parliament in northern Iraq voted overwhelmingly to reject the entry of “foreign forces.” This was in response to the confused reports coming from Ankara that the government had agreed to a resolution calling for U.S. troop deployments and for its own forces to enter northern Iraq. In fact, things were still far from clear, as many within Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) opposed the resolution, and the chances of it gaining parliamentary approval were still uncertain at the time.

Back at Ugrak, there is also a great deal of uncertainty. Many village guards, moreover, have been seconded to the Turkish army for its operations in northern Iraq, acting as guides and translators. One thing does seem sure, however. ”We will fight for our land,” one of the villagers said. “We always have.”

Whose land and whose fight, however, remains to be seen.

Jon Gorvett is a free-lance journalist based in Istanbul.