Iraqi Kurds vow to fight off attack on their region
ARBIL, Oct 19: Iraq’s Kurds vowed on Friday to fight off any attack on their region as pressure mounted on Baghdad and Washington to act against Kurdish rebels and stave off a threatened Turkish incursion.
Kurdish regional president Massoud Barzani issued strongly worded statement hours after US Defence Secretary Robert Gates hinted that US and Iraqi forces were ready to act against Turkish Kurd rebels in northern Iraq.
“We frankly say to all parties: if they attack the region or Kurdistan experiment under whatever pretext, we will be completely ready to defend our democratic experiment and the dignity of our people and the sanctity of our homeland,” Mr Barzani said.
He said Iraqi Kurds were not to blame for the trouble between Turkey and the rebels from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and reiterated a call for Ankara to hold negotiations with his autonomous Kurdish government based in Arbil.
A senior Turkish official, however, rejected direct talks with the regional authorities to defuse the crisis and said the Turks would deal only with the central government in Baghdad.
“We don’t talk to Iraqi Kurdish groups. Our interlocutor is the Iraqi government in Baghdad, and we discuss whatever we want to discuss with its representatives,” said Deputy Prime Minister Cemil Cicek.
The Turkish parliament gave permission to the military on Wednesday to launch an incursion into northern Iraq to pursue the PKK although Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoyan indicated that no such action was imminent.
Turkey says the rebels enjoy free movement in Iraq’s Kurdish north and are tolerated or even actively supported by the regional political leaders, something they have repeatedly denied.
“The Kurdish region strongly rejects the charges of helping the PKK,” Mr Barzani said again in his statement.
“We are astonished by this tension during the past few days and the Turkish stance in crossing Kurdistan’s borders under the pretext of striking at the PKK.” Mr Gates said the United States was determined to work with the Turks to reduce the PKK threat and said Washington and Baghdad were prepared to do the “appropriate thing” if necessary. He did not specify what that implied.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has vowed that he will bring an end to the presence inside Iraq of the PKK, who he has labelled “terrorists” several times in recent days.
But the situation on the ground means his options are limited. The Iraqi army is not deployed on the Turkish border or anywhere else in the region, where security is under the control of Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga militiamen.
Observers say any moves to rein in the PKK must come from the Kurdish administration which controls the peshmerga and has more influence with the rebel group than the central government in Baghdad.
An umbrella group of parties in Iraqi Kurdistan issued a statement calling on the Turkish rebels to reflect on the present tension.
“We demand the PKK take into consideration the situation in the province of Kurdistan and sees that it does not cause problems,” said the statement from the Supreme Council of Kurdistan.
The Council, which includes the main Kurdish political parties as well as Islamic groups and representatives of the region’s Turkmen and Christian minorities, also called on Turkey to enter dialogue.
But Turkish officials were adamant they would deal with Baghdad and not the Kurdish regional government which they accuse of past inaction.
“Those who do not stop the theft are friends of the thief,” the deputy prime minister told the English-language daily Today in Ankara.
Mr Cicek also lashed out at the European Union, accusing the bloc of “hypocrisy” for failing to act against PKK militants active in member countries despite listing the group as a terrorist organisation.
Turkey has long accused European countries of tolerating PKK activities and failing to close down organisations affiliated to the group.
Many Kurds were granted political asylum in European countries, notably in the 1990s, when Ankara’s heavy-handed policies against its large Kurdish minority put its human rights record under the international spotlight.—AFP
