Turkey Prepares To Stake Claim In Iraq's Oil Fields

The Telegraph (UK) ^ | 1-7-2003 | Amberin Zaman

[blam]

Turkey prepares to stake claim in Iraq's oil fields

By Amberin Zaman in Ankara
(Filed: 07/01/2003)

Turkey, one of Washington's most important allies against Saddam Hussein, claimed yesterday that it may have a historical stake in Iraq's northern oil fields.

Yasar Yakis, the foreign minister, said he was examining treaties from the early 20th century to see whether Turkey had a claim to the oil fields of the Mosul and Kirkuk provinces, which the Turks ruled during Ottoman times.

In comments published yesterday in the Hurriyet newspaper, Mr Yakis said: "If we do have such rights, we have to explain this to the international community and our partners in order to secure those rights."

His comments will not be welcomed in the United States or the region, where there are considerable anxieties about the likely results of a war on the integrity of Iraq.

While Mr Yakis was careful to emphasise that Turkey had no territorial claims over the provinces, his comments were greeted with anger by Arab diplomats in Ankara.

"He is revealing Turkey's true intentions. They are playing a dangerous game," said one senior Arab diplomat, who declined to be identified.

However, Western diplomats interpreted Mr Yakis's remarks as a further attempt to discourage the Iraqi Kurds from making a play for the provinces during an eventual war against Baghdad.

The Iraqi Kurds, who have controlled the north of the country - but not the oil fields - since the 1991 Gulf war, say that Kirkuk is historically a Kurdish city and should be the capital of the semi-independent state they are demanding in exchange for support in a war against Saddam Hussain.

Such claims have angered Turkey, which claims that Kirkuk and Mosul are dominated not by the Kurds but by an ethnic Turkish group called the Turcomans.

In recent years, Turkey has been arming and training a Turcoman faction in northern Iraq known as the Turcoman Front as its stalking horse in the Kurdish-controlled enclave.

Ankara's top generals have taken turns to threaten to invade Iraqi Kurdistan should the Kurds try to break away from Baghdad. Some 5,000 Turkish troops are already deployed in and around Iraqi Kurdish territory held by Massoud Barzani, the leader of the stronger of the two Kurdish factions controlling northern Iraq.

The troops are officially there to hunt down Kurdish separatist PKK guerrillas who fought a 15-year insurgency against Turkish troops that ended in 1999 after the capture of their leader, Abdullah Ocalan.

Iraq is home to the world's second-largest oil reserves after Saudi Arabia and before the 1991 Gulf war more than half of the country's oil exports were pumped through a dual pipeline running from Kirkuk to Turkey's southern Mediterranean port of Ceyhan.

The pipeline was sealed in compliance with United Nations sanctions after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait. It was re-opened in 1996 under the UN's oil for food programme, which allows Iraq to export its oil in order to purchase humanitarian supplies.

Iraq has repeatedly accused America of wanting to seize control of its oil under the pretext of installing a democratic government in Baghdad.

Turkey's claims to Iraqi oil date back to the early 1920s when the Ottoman Empire was being carved up following its defeat by the Allies in the First World War. Under a treaty signed by the new Turkish Republic and Britain, Turkey was to receive 10 per cent of all Iraqi oil revenues for a 25-year period in exchange for renouncing its territorial claims over Mosul and Kirkuk.

That treaty was suspended in 1958 under the government of Adnan Menderes, the late Turkish premier, as a gesture of goodwill towards Iraq. But subsequent governments sought to revive the treaty.

"Such initiatives by Turkey will go nowhere," said Baskin Oran, a professor of international relations at Ankara University, who has studied the treaties.

According to Prof Oran's own estimates, Turkey is not due any more than £20 million in unpaid revenue stemming from its 1926 treaty rights.

[blam]

Claim linked to carve-up of empire in Great War

By Anton La Guardia
(Filed: 07/01/2003)

Turkey's claim to northern Iraq has its roots in the upheaval that followed the break-up of the Ottoman Empire and the creation of the secular Turkish republic after the First World War.

In 1920, the victorious Allies imposed the Treaty of Sevres on the Turkish Sultan, stripping him of non-Turkish domains, including the province of Mosul, now in northern Iraq.

The treaty was never implemented, and the victories of Turkish nationalists under Kemal Ataturk led to the revised Treaty of Lausanne in 1923. This set out most of Turkey's current borders, but Ataturk was reluctant to give up Mosul, to British-ruled Iraq, not least because its oil riches had become apparent.

The Treaty of Lausanne stated that "the frontier between Turkey and Iraq shall be laid down in friendly arrangement to be concluded between Turkey and Great Britain within nine months".

After a prolonged dispute, Turkey signed a treaty with Britain in 1926 ceding the old province to Iraq.

The "Mosul question" was all but forgotten until the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, when Baghdad lost control of parts of the Kurdish areas and Turkey made clear it would move in should Saddam Hussein's regime fall.

In 1995, the Turkish prime minister, Suleyman Demirel, called for the frontier to be changed but retracted his comments amid uproar in the Arab world. Nevertheless, Turkish leaders have periodically spoken of northern Iraq being under Turkish "trust".

Now that Iraq's future is once more in question, Turkey is sending a clear signal that it will not stand back if Kurds try to carve out their own state from the ruins of Saddam's Iraq.

[Shermy]

I guess the press is catching up with the discussions on FR - from a year ago.

[a_Turk]

I like our new government. No pussies.. You want war? Threaten us to make us help? Well, we'll help,,, ourselves!!

[Grampa Dave]

This may help explain Opec which is now considering increasing production to make up for the loss of oil coming from Venezula. (OPEC members are debating whether to make an exceptional increase in oil output of up to 1.5 million barrels a day, in an effort to calm markets nervous about worsening unrest in Venezuela and a possible war against Iraq, a source at the cartel said Tuesday. )

[Grampa Dave]

The Opecker Princes and Opecker Islamofascists like Uncle Soddomite and the Murdering Mullahs of Iran must be going even nuttier with the new Turkish Government and our government under President Bush.

As you know, I have been all for the Turks taking back all of their oil sands ASAP, both in Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

[a_Turk]

Opec helping Bush? They must be worried about losing market share to Russia.

[Grampa Dave]

Well, quite often, we are way ahead of the news curve here on Free Republic.

We look at reality and what that reality could be in a world without the Opecker Princes and Islamofascists using the Opec cartel to control our future.

Since we haven't been bribed for decades like the left wing mediots have been with Opecker Blood Money, we look at the world differently.

The Saudis with in any common sense should be putting a billion $ reward for anyone who kills Uncle Soddomite and his DNA pool and removes the heads of the murdering Mullahs in Iran.

Then, they need to behead about 100,000 of the Saudi-Wahhabi death cult. Next they need to stop all flow of Opecker blood money to all Islamokazi terrorists. If they set back and play their old game, they will not be around in 1-2 years after Iraq is purified from the Soddomite plague.

Personally, I don't want them to do anything until they and the whole world gets to see what our military can bring on the heads of petty tyrants who finance terrorism and anti American Bravo Sierra. After one week, they will have soiled all of their expensive silk Burkas purchased from Harrods of London.

Then I want them to purify and remove the trash they have been financing since the days of Jimmy Carter.

[a_Turk]

>> Then, they need to behead about 100,000 of the Saudi-Wahhabi death cult

I can tell you're pissed :^D

[Thinkin' Gal]

Claim linked to carve-up of empire in Great War

Jordan's King Abdullah (R) chats with Turkish Prime Minister Abdullah Gul at the Royal Palace in Amman, January 6, 2003. Gul arrived in Amman on Monday to discuss with King Abdullah and senior officials latest efforts to end the Iraq crisis and to reinforce Turkey's relations with the Arab world ahead of a possible war with Iraq. REUTERS/Yousef Allan

[Grampa Dave]

Naw, I'm not pi$$ed. I'm a realist. This problem of 3 decades of Islamokazi terrorism will never be over until every key Wahhabi loses his head in Saudi Arabia and other countries along with the dismantling and destruction of Opeck.

These key Saudi Wahhabi's are like the orginal Nazis in Germany. After we killed most of the Nazi soldiers, sailors and airmen, after the war we had to imprison or kill the original Nazis. One can only imagine what the Russians did to those that they got hold off.

The Saudi Wahhabis are like a big pocket of pus in a person. As long as that pocket of pus is allowed to stay safe, warm and breeding new germs, the patient will be sick until he dies. Good doctors, lance the pocket of pus, drain off and kill the bad bugs and treat the patient with antibiotics. When all the bugs in the excised pocket of pus and in the body are dead, the patient can return to good health.

The Saudis can either start to removing this pocket of pus, the Saudi Wahhibi Death Cult Leaders and disinfecting their country, or we will do it. If we do it, there will be no Saudi Arabia after the disinfecting and removal of the pocket of pus, the Saudi Wahhibi Death Cult Leaders.

As president Bush warned them last year, "They can chose life or death? The choice is theirs!"

[BOBTHENAILER]

Personally, I don't want them to do anything until they and the whole world gets to see what our military can bring on the heads of petty tyrants who finance terrorism and anti American Bravo Sierra.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

[BOBTHENAILER]

They must be worried about losing market share to Russia.

No doubt about it, they are.

[mommadooo3]

They want to end the Iraq crisis? Does that mean they think sodom oughta cough up his nukes and such? Or do they want everyone to sit down and talk nicey nice to one another?

[Grampa Dave]

They are worried about losing market share, seeing Opec become a dinosaur, democracies in Iran/Iraq/? and allies like the Turks getting control of oil areas in Iraq/?.

They probably hate OBL and al Qaeda more than we do at this time. 9/11 was the beginning of the end of Opec and the blood money used from Opec to finance Islamokazi Terrorism in America and around the world. 9/11 will all ways be a nightmare to Americans, however, it is turning out to be a day time terror and night time terror for those who financed and enabled 9/11.

[Grampa Dave]

Here is another article that has to have the Opecker Princes and Islamofascist Thugs of Opec quivering in their silken robes: (UK signals push to secure Iraqi oilfields (divying up the coming spoils))

The beauty of articles like this and behind the door leaks of what might happen is the depressing and panic effect this has to have on the Opecker Princes and Islamofascists thugs of Opec.

The implied message here, is very simple. You have a few days to start to really clean up your mess, or we will clean it up and your playpen will be gone. So will your golden goose, Opec, be gone.

If you really PO us, we will allow your own people to settle accounts of your brutality with them for decades with you as lesson to other brutal tyrants.

[RightWhale]

Turks saved Islam and possibly Europe from the Mongols, so all Muslims shold carry some residual gratitude, don't you think?

[chance33_98]

Turkey revives 80-year old claims for stake in Iraqi oil

[BOBTHENAILER]

The implied message here, is very simple. You have a few days to start to really clean up your mess, or we will clean it up and your playpen will be gone. So will your golden goose, Opec, be gone.

Simple indeed.

[Grampa Dave]

Do you gentlemen know what the current hottest ad link at Yahoo is for the Islamofacists Thugs of Iraq, Iran, Syria/? at this time?

(Yahoo Hottest Islamofascist Ad Link)