ISTANBUL: Against the background of a possible United States military operation in Iraq to unseat Saddam Hussein, tensions between Turkey and the Kurds of northern Iraq are rising — and taking on a martial tone.

Relations between the two sides have degraded to the point where Iraqi Kurdish leader Massud Barsani, in response to Turkish “provocations”, warned that “a grave” would be prepared for the Turkish army if it dared intervene in northern Iraq.

What is behind all the saber rattling?

US President George W. Bush’s extensive efforts to include the Kurdish opposition in his plans to topple Iraq strongman Saddam Hussein have raised Turkish suspicions.

The idea of a change of regime in Iraq would find full support with Turkey’s government and military, but only on condition that the creation of a Kurdish state be avoided at all costs.

After successfully overpowering the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) that for 15 years has sought to set up an autonomous Kurdish region in Turkey’s southeast, Ankara is has no interest in seeing the unrest that could accompany the birth of a Kurdish state just across the border.

Despite its misgivings that military invention in Iraq would destabilize the region, Turkey has given the appearance of accepting a US attack.

“We are making political and military preparations,” was the latest statement on the matter from Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit, who could not have ignored the financial benefits of a “strategic partnership” with the United States for his crisis-ridden country.

The first signs of Turkey’s lack of trust for Iraqi Kurds appeared when Bush invited northern Iraqi opposition groups to Washington.

The Turkish army, as it pursued PKK fighters in Iraq, had made attempts to reach out to the Democratic Party of Kurdistan which Barsani led. When it came however to the Washington meeting, Barsani was forced to send a deputy because, as Turkish media reported, Turkish authorities confiscated his diplomatic passport.

At the heart of the matter, is Ankara’s difficulty in swallowing Barsani’s assertion that the Kurds of north Iraq have no plans of creating their own state.

This disbelief is strengthened by Turkish media reports that the two main Kurdish groups — Barsani’s group and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan led by Jalal Talabani, who have shared power in northern Iraq since the 1991 Gulf War — have recently agreed to further consolidate Kurdish national structures.

The last straw was the discovery of a map of northern Iraq that Turkish media attributed to Barsani, in which the city of Mosul was identified as “Kurdish”.

Turkish nationalists were immediately reminded of the disintegration of the (Turkish) Ottoman Empire at the beginning of the 20th century.

“(The area around the cities of) Mosul and Kirkuk is a Turkmen area. That anyone has their eye on this region is intolerable,” thundered Sabahattin Cakmakoglu, Turkish defence minister and member of the right-wing National Action Party (MHP).

According to the Turkish Daily News, there are three million Turkmen — ethnic Turks — in Iraq. Of that number, 400,000 live in the region around Mosul, which was already a subject of dispute at the end of the Ottoman Empire — not least due to the presence of oil there.

It was only under British pressure that Turkey relented and ceded the territory in 1926 — to Iraq.—dpa