Turkey has been making noises that the Iraqi Kurds should not get too hopeful about establishing a quasi-independent entity in the three governates they control in northern Iraq. Now, it looks like Turkey is ready to back up their words with force. However, there is an election coming up in Turkey, so the possibility that this is all fodder for domestic constituencies cannot be ruled out.
In which the Deputy Chairman of HADEP, the Kurdish party in Turkey, talks about the state of affairs in the southeast part of the country.
Being the second of my dispatches from Turkey, this time from Ankara… The call for prayer is echoing outside my window, I’m staying with Aykut and his wife and I�ve just seen on the news that the UN has failed to reach an agreement with Iraq on the return of arms inspectors and that the New York Times has published a front-page story outlining plans for a three-pronged attack on Iraq. … I’ll be there in a week.
So I posted the constitutions last night along with 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,” said Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit.
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.”
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