Ecevit: Kurds dragging Turkey into war

By Christopher Allbritton | Published: October 13, 2002

Wow. I posted the pro­posed Kur­dish and Iraqi con­sti­tu­tions last night—and my thoughts that the Kurds are ask­ing for trouble—and wouldn’t you know it? Today, the Guardian runs this. It’s more of that growl­ing that I men­tioned in my pre­vi­ous post, but what’s most alarm­ing about this is Turkey’s charges that the United States is direct­ing the Kurds: “It is beyond encour­age­ment, (Wash­ing­ton) is direct­ing them,” Prime Min­is­ter Bulent Ece­vit told the Turk­ish paper Mil­liyet. “We will talk to the United States.” If the United States is direct­ing the PUK and the KDP, that would amount to a stun­ning rever­sal against Turkey, one of our most loyal allies in the region. I don’t think that we are, frankly, and these com­ments are likely play­ing to Ecevit’s nation­al­ist base of sup­port, which often views the U.S. with sus­pi­cion. (They still har­bor resent­ments over Cyprus form 1964 and 1974.)
The United States needs Turkey more than it needs the Kurds, sadly, as the Kurds have only about 80,000 lightly armed pesh­mer­gas while the Turks have tanks and F-16s (bought from the United States, of course.) They’re also a NATO ally and Incir­lik is a nec­es­sary base for run­ning sor­ties in the north­ern no-fly zone.
But beyond that Turkey is valu­able to the United States in that it pro­vides a “good exam­ple” of democ­racy and Islam, serv­ing as an effec­tive ide­o­log­i­cal coun­ter­weight to Iran. It also has close ties to the Turkish-speaking peo­ples of cen­tral Asia and their energy reserves.
This is why the United States has been such a pro­po­nent of Turkey’s ascen­sion to the Euro­pean Union. America’s sup­port is a com­plex web of self-interest (keep­ing a strong, demo­c­ra­tic Mus­lim nation tied to the West) and pay-back (see mil­i­tary alliance above.) It’s also why the Kurds of south­east Turkey both admire and resent the United States. They admire it for its stance on the Turkey-EU issue, and they see mem­ber­ship as the key to eco­nomic recov­ery in that depressed region. They resent Amer­ica because it was very very sup­port­ive of Turkey’s war against the PKK’s ter­ror cam­paign (which Turkey remem­bered when Sept. 11, 2001 hap­pened.)
So, again, I’m not sure what would hap­pen if Iraq’s Kurds attain some form of inde­pen­dence. That would almost cer­tainly drive the Turks to war in Iraqi Kur­dis­tan, and what then would the Amer­i­cans do? This may turn out to be a big­ger ques­tion than who rules the day after Saddam…

Posted in Iraq, Kurds, Politics, Turkey | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Proposed Iraqi constitution(s) asking for trouble

By Christopher Allbritton | Published: October 12, 2002

Here’s some­thing you won’t find any­where else. (I googled.) These are the scanned copies of the pro­posed con­sti­tu­tions for Iraq, post-Saddam. Sami Abdul Rah­man, the deputy prime min­is­ter (KDP) of the Kur­dis­tan Regional Gov­ern­ment, gave them to me after I inter­viewed him in his offices in the Par­lia­ment build­ing in Arbil. He wrote them, and the KDP and PUK, in a rare show of pub­lic unity, have signed on. Even State, back in July, said the ideas were “inter­est­ing.” There are two files, the pro­posed con­sti­tu­tion for a Fed­eral Repub­lic of Iraq (3.0MB), heav­ily mod­eled on the United States Con­sti­tu­tion, and the con­sti­tu­tion for the Kur­dish region (5.6MB). Sorry for the size of the files. I tried to make them as small as I could.
The first one maps out a plan that would divide the coun­try into two regions: The Arabs would get the mid­dle and south­ern regions along with the province of Nin­eveh (except­ing regions that have Kur­dish majori­ties) and the Kurds would get the provinces of Kirkuk, Suleimaniya, Arbil and Duhok, the dis­tricts of Aqra, Sheihkan and Sin­jar and the sub-districts of Zimar (in Nin­eveh), Khaniqin and Man­dali (Diyala) and Badra (in the province of Al-Wasit.) Unlike the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion, how­ever, there is a state reli­gion — Islam — and offi­cial lan­guages (Kur­dish in the Kur­dish regions and Ara­bic in the other.)
There is a lib­eral col­lec­tion of rights granted, but a wor­ri­some depen­dence on “the law,” as in, “No one can be cap­tured, detained, jailed, or searched except in cir­cum­stances defined in law.” This loop­hole is scat­tered through­out the doc­u­ment, sub­or­di­nat­ing the con­sti­tu­tions to what­ever the regional or national leg­is­la­tures want to write into the law­books. Instead of being the supreme law of the land, as in the United States, the con­sti­tu­tions instead pro­vide jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for, say, the harsh rule of shar’ia, should Islamists gain con­trol over the National Assem­bly.
And while “power is inher­ent in the peo­ple as they are the source of its legit­macy,” I worry that this draft is too weak to pro­tect the peo­ple of Iraq (and par­tic­u­larly the Kurds) from democ­racy gone bad. Jef­fer­son­ian these doc­u­ments ain’t.
There’s also a lot that will piss off the Turks, mak­ing the adop­tion of this char­ter less than likely. The Kurds blame much of Iraq’s (and by exten­sion their own) mis­for­tunes on the cen­tral­iza­tion of power in Iraq. This is exactly the prob­lem in Turkey and while a few Turk­ish intel­lec­tu­als have floated the idea of a fed­eral struc­ture in Turkey, that idea has about as much of a chance as Sad­dam does of win­ning another war and occu­py­ing Wash­ing­ton.
As the pre­am­ble says:

Cen­tral­iza­tion in gov­ern­ment has lost its appeal even within sim­ple and homoge­nous com­mu­ni­ties. It has espe­cially lost its ratio­nale for being resorted to in com­mu­ni­ties that are of a plu­ral­ist nature made up of var­i­ous nation­al­i­ties, reli­gious groups and lan­guages, such as the Iraqi [Ed: And Turk­ish] com­mu­nity. The high degree of cen­tral­iza­tion and the indif­fer­ence of deci­sion mak­ers to the pres­ence of the spe­cial char­ac­ter­is­tics of the Kur­dish peo­ple are among the basic rea­sons for the Kurds being deprived of their legit­i­mate rights under suc­ces­sive Iraqi gov­ern­ments, which came to power under both the monar­chy and the repub­lic. This style of restrict­ing author­ity in t he cen­tre and the unwill­ing­ness to share it with the Kurds on a prac­ti­cal basis, even after the March 11, 1970 auton­omy agree­ment has been the hall­mark of the role of the Iraqi state.

Well, yeah, and Sad­dam mur­der­ing inno­cent women and chil­dren with chem­i­cal weapons has also been a “hall­mark of the role of the Iraqi state.” Harp­ing on the evils cen­tral­iza­tion and the fail­ure to rec­og­nize the spe­cial nature of Kurds — which is exactly what has been hap­pen­ing in Turkey since 1921 — is ask­ing for trou­ble, if you ask me. Every crit­i­cism men­tioned in the pre­am­ble against Iraq could equally be lev­eled at Turkey. (Except the Turks haven’t bombed vil­lages with afla­toxin or other weapons of mass destruc­tion.) And Turkey has been growl­ing that any deal that leaves the Kurds with inde­pen­dence, either de facto or de jure, will be met with guns and tanks. And I have no idea what the United States, as the new regional power­bro­ker, would do if a NATO ally began oper­a­tions in the area Amer­ica claims as con­quered territory.

Posted in Iraq, Kurds, Politics | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Holy crap, I’m in Istanbul (redux)

By Christopher Allbritton | Published: October 11, 2002

This was my email to a list of friends and fam­ily that I sent out after I landed in Istan­bul and started my trip. Except for some minor edit­ing (typos, spelling errors, con­ti­nu­ity and some gram­mar clean-up) this is what went out, more or less (except for really stu­pid, per­sonal stuff.) This entry was emailed July 2, 2002 while I was over­look­ing the Bosporus, the nar­row strait that divides the city and the two con­ti­nents of Europe and Asia. This is the first entry of a con­tin­u­ing series of my emails and jour­nal entries of my trip over there. It’s designed to whet your appetite so you will send me back. (Hint: Donate but­ton is over to the right.)
From: Christopher Allbritton Date: Tue Jul 2, 2002 3:20:59 AM US/Pacific

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Istan­bul! I landed at Atat&#x00FC;rk Inter­na­tional yes­ter­day at 3 p.m. or so after a cou­ple of hours cool­ing my heels in Budapest. Took a bus to Tak­sim, the cen­tral plaza in the “mod­ern” part of the city, and from there, I took a taxi up to Bo&#x011F;azi’i Uni­ver­sity, where I’m stay­ing thanks to the hos­pi­tal­ity of Prof. Deniz Ilgaz.
Damn, this is a con­fus­ing place. The street energy is like New York at a rave but with­out the feel­good vibe. The taxi dri­vers are homi­ci­dal (and sui­ci­dal) and the cars bear the scars of numer­ous encoun­ters with bumpers and doors and hap­less pedes­tri­ans. The city passes by in a blur, but ancient struc­tures exist among mod­ern sky­scrap­ers and west­ern fast­food chains. It’s all a bit over­whelm­ing.
And Turk­ish is just impos­si­ble. But first, some basic geog­ra­phy: Istan­bul is divided in half by the Bosporus, duh, into Euro­pean and Asian (Ana­to­lian) sides. The Euro­pean side is fur­ther divided into North and South parts by the Golden Horn, a great nat­ural har­bor. South is the old, Ottoman city with all the tourist stuff (Aya Sofia, the Blue Mosque, yadda yadda yadda.) In the 19th cen­tury this part of the city, called Emin&#x00F6;n&#x00FC;, was left to the Sul­tans as an Ottoman play­ground with harems, palaces, hookahs, and the whole Dis­ney­land on opium thing. The north­ern part, (Beyo&#x011F;lu) where I’m stay­ing, was mod­ern­ized, with street­cars, tele­phones, plumb­ing, etc. So I have to go into Emin&#x00F6;n&#x00FC; to get my press creds. The office is housed in one of innu­mer­able palaces on the Bosporus. And there are a lot of them.
[Editor’s note: Here lie three para­graphs that detail the dynam­ics of a par­tic­u­larly bad liai­son I had while in Ger­many. It really doesn’t do any­one any good to rehash this stuff, so I cut them.]
Back to Turkey. I took out 200,000,000 Turk­ish Lira from my account at the air­port yes­ter­day. I’ve never with­drawn 200 mil­lion of any­thing before, so I felt like a real rich guy. (It’s about $125 or so.) I still have, after pay­ing for a cou­ple of meals, a taxi ride and a bus ride, … Uh, shit. A whole lot of zeros. Actu­ally, I still have 178 mil­lion TL, or about $111.25… Jesus, all of that cost just under $15? I could live like a king in Istan­bul if I had dol­lars com­ing in.
I’m stay­ing in an antique Ottoman house near the Bosporus ( Bo&#x011F;azi’i in Turk­ish, don’t ask me how to pro­nounce it.) From my win­dow, I can see the old fortress Hisar, the fort built by Sul­tan Fatih to con­quer Con­stan­tino­ple in 1453. There’s an even older fort on the oppo­site side, the Asian side, built by the Byzan­tines, and I don’t mean the East­ern Roman Empire. I mean the peo­ple who built the city of Byzan­tium that pre­dates even Emperor Con­stan­tine, who founded Con­stan­tino­ple in AD 338, if I recall the date cor­rectly.
At any rate, it’s really, really old.
And why did they change the name from Con­stan­tino­ple? That’s nobody’s busi­ness but the Turks. (Actu­ally, it’s a cor­rup­tion of a Greek term that means “in the city.”)
Today, at 2:30, I meet with Kemal Kiri&#x015F;’i, a Bo&#x0011F;azi’i Uni­ver­sity pro­fes­sor who wrote a book on the Kurds and now deals with EU-Turkey issues. I think he will be very infor­ma­tive. After that, I have to go in to the old city, across the Golden Horn, and pick up my press cre­den­tials. That should take the bet­ter part of the rest of the day. Then I’m meet­ing some peo­ple I’ve been email­ing for din­ner and that’s that. Whew!
On Thurs­day, in cel­e­bra­tion of July 4, I will get on a bus to Ankara, where I will meet my fixer. We’ll work on some logis­tics and plan for a few days and then head out to Diyarbakir and the rest of the coun­try. It’s a shame I won’t have more time in Istan­bul, as it’s a fas­ci­nat­ing city. Big­ger than NYC, too. Nine mil­lion peo­ple (although that’s only about 5.625 peo­ple thanks to the exchange rate.)
So that’s it. All is well, and I have my own Inter­net access. Life is good.
Posted in Dispatches, Journalism, Turkey | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Calif. congressman: “I don’t trust this president”

By Christopher Allbritton | Published: October 11, 2002

Woah. <a title=“Salon.com Pol­i­tics | “The bot­tom line is I don’t trust this pres­i­dent and his advi­sors”” href=“http://www.salon.com/politics/feature/2002/10/10/stark/index.html” onclick=“javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview(‘/outbound/article/http://www.salon.com/politics/feature/2002/10/10/stark/index.html’);”>This fir­ery deun­ci­a­tion of Bush comes from Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif. (He rep­re­sents Fre­mont, home of the largest pop­u­la­tion of Afgha­nis in the United States, inter­est­ingly enough.) His state­ment is full of red meat for left­ists, call­ing Bush a light­weight National Guards­man in the 1960s, and ques­tion­ing his tough-guy cred by quot­ing colum­nist Molly Ivins: “For an upper-class white boy, Bush comes on way too hard. At a guess, to make up for being an upper-class white boy.” I’m not one to take away from Mssr. Stark’s state­ment. I agree with most of it, in that the peo­ple who will pick up the $200 bil­lion (esti­mated) tab for Gulf War II: The Sequel will likely be peo­ple like my grand­mother who depends on Medicare, but will see it cut to make way for Bush’s tax cut and war costs. Oth­ers likely to pay include those who need unem­ploy­ment insur­ance, stu­dents who don’t get fed­eral money to go to col­lege and any num­ber of nat­ural Demo­c­ra­tic con­stituen­cies.
And now that the House and Seanate have passed their respec­tive war res­o­lu­tions, we have politi­cians like Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., who say things like, “The bot­tom line is … we want to move on.” The impres­sion one gets is that Democ­rats want to move on to eco­nomic issues that play well a month from now, that might give them back the House and cement their hold on the Sen­ate. Under­standible, true, but at what cost?
It seems the Democ­rats were out­ma­neu­vered by Bush & Co. yet again, just as Repub­li­cans were con­stantly out­ma­neu­vered by Pres­i­dent Clin­ton through most of the 1990s. Bush cranked up the war rhetoric from Sep­tem­ber on, to force an early vote, know­ing the Democ­rats would be forced to either delay the vote, and open them­selves up to charges of trea­son and/or wimp­ism (the Bush family’s least favorite slur!) or rush the vote and give the pres­i­dent what he wanted in the first place. Of course, this week’s quickie vote on war will come back to haunt the Democ­rats, when their lib­eral, anti-war sup­port­ers get wooed by the Green Party charg­ing that Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans are but two sides of the same coin. (Nader’s party is active in many close races, poten­tially threat­en­ing Democ­rats from the left.)
So Mssr. Stark can afford to vote no and denounce Bush on the House floor. He’s in a safe dis­trict. The ques­tion is, now that he’s got his war on, will Bush’s action leave any­where safe?

Posted in Politics | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

More Goldberg

By Christopher Allbritton | Published: October 11, 2002

This looks good. No com­men­tary this time, as Jef­frey Gold­berg is an idol of mine. No, this is just a pointer to his lat­est stuff in The New Yorker, in which he looks at Hezbol­lah. His arti­cle in the spring of 2002 inspired me to head off to Iraq.

Posted in Terrorism | Leave a comment

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