1- Expiration of a signatory power: The Ottoman sultanate, and
2- The Treaty of Lausanne
Posted on 02/20/2003 6:39:53 PM PST by BlackJack
‘Turkey demands control of Iraq from US’
By Owen Matthews, Sami Kohen and John Barry
ANKARA: Turkey is raising its price for allowing US forces to invade Iraq from its territory. In early negotiations with the United States, Ankara spoke of sending in Turkish troops to set up a “buffer zone” perhaps 15 miles deep along the Iraqi border. This would prevent a flood of Kurdish refugees from northern Iraq, the Turks said.
But now, Newsweek has learned, Turkey is demanding that it send 60,000 to 80,000 of its own troops into northern Iraq to establish “strategic positions” across a “security arc” as much as 140 to 170 miles deep in Iraq. That would take Turkish troops almost halfway to Baghdad. These troops would not be under US command, according to Turkish sources, who say Turkey has agreed only to “coordination” between US and Turkish forces.
Ankara fears the Iraqi Kurds might use Saddam’s fall to declare independence. Kurdish leaders have not yet been told of this new plan, according to Kurdish spokesmen in Washington, who say the Kurds rejected even the earlier notion of a narrow buffer zone. Farhad Barzani, the US representative of the main Kurdish party in Iraq, the KDP, says, “We have told them: American troops will come as liberators. But Turkish troops will be seen as invaders.”
The White House did not respond to requests for comment; officials elsewhere in the administration played down the Turkish demands as bargaining tactics: “We told them flat out, no.” But independent diplomatic sources in Ankara and Washington with knowledge of the US-Turkey talks say that while the precise depth of the “security zone” has still to be agreed, the concept is “pretty much a done deal,” as one observer put it.
These sources add that the main US concern has been that US, not Turkish, troops occupy the northern Iraqi cities of Mosul and Kirkuk, and that Turkish troops merely surround but not enter the heavily Kurdish cities of Erbil and Sulemaniye. To get Turkey’s assent to this, these sources say, the United States had to “cave” on its demand that Turkish troops be under US control.
Two days of tough negotiations in Washington last week failed to settle the other part of Turkey’s price: a multibillion-dollar economic package. Turkish PM Abdullah Gul is now threatening to delay the all-important vote in the Turkish Parliament to allow US deployments in Turkey. Pentagon officials acknowledge frustration at the problems Turkey’s bargaining poses for the US military buildup.
Turkish sources say that when Turkey’s Foreign Minister Yasar Yakis met with President Bush on Friday, the president warned that the United States might open a northern front against Iraq without Turkish participation. But military sources say that would be close to impossible.
“Turkey is playing hardball,” said Michael Amitay of the Washington Kurdish Institute. “But if the US agrees to these Turkish deployments, there is a real risk that the Kurds will start a guerrilla war against the Turkish troops.” —Newsweek
SECTION III.
KURDISTAN.
ARTICLE 62.
A Commission sitting at Constantinople and composed of three members appointed by the British, French and Italian Governments respectively shall draft within six months from the coming into force of the present Treaty a scheme of local autonomy for the predominantly Kurdish areas lying east of the Euphrates, south of the southern boundary of Armenia as it may be hereafter determined, and north of the frontier of Turkey with Syria and Mesopotamia, as defined in Article 27, II (2) and (3). If unanimity cannot be secured on any question, it will be referred by the members of the Commission to their respective Governments. The scheme shall contain full safeguards for the protection of the Assyro-Chaldeans and other racial or religious minorities within these areas, and with this object a Commission composed of British, French, Italian, Persian and Kurdish representatives shall visit the spot to examine and decide what rectifications, if any, should be made in the Turkish frontier where, under the provisions of the present Treaty, that frontier coincides with that of Persia.
ARTICLE 63.
The Turkish Government hereby agrees to accept and execute the decisions of both the Commissions mentioned in Article 62 within three months from their communication to the said Government.
ARTICLE 64.
If within one year from the coming into force of the present Treaty the Kurdish peoples within the areas defined in Article 62 shall address themselves to the Council of the League of Nations in such a manner as to show that a majority of the population of these areas desires independence from Turkey, and if the Council then considers that these peoples are capable of such independence and recommends that it should be granted to them, Turkey hereby agrees to execute such a recommendation, and to renounce all rights and title over these areas. The detailed provisions for such renunciation will form the subject of a separate agreement between the Principal Allied Powers and Turkey. If and when such renunciation takes place, no objection will be raised by the Principal Allied Powers to the voluntary adhesion to such an independent Kurdish State of the Kurds inhabiting that part of Kurdistan which has hitherto been included in the Mosul vilayet.
source= Treaty of Sevres
ARTICLE 27.
No power or jurisdiction in political, legislative or administrative matters shall be exercised outside Turkish territory by the Turkish Government or authorities, for any reason whatsoever, over the nationals of a territory placed under the sovereignty or protectorate of the other Powers signatory of the present Treaty, or over the nationals of a territory detached from Turkey.
It is understood that the spiritual attributions of the Moslem religious authorities are in no way infringed.
If you are going to deny Kurds in Turkey independence based on this treaty then doesn't this section prevent your country from occupying Iraq?
SECTION II .
NATIONALITY.
ARTICLE 30.
Turkish subjects habitually resident in territory which in accordance with the provisions of the present Treaty is detached from Turkey will become ipsofacto, in the conditions laid down by the local law, nationals of the State to which such territory is transferred.
This would seem to make Kurds living in Iraq, Iraqi citizens.
We can continue this conversation later if you like. Goodnight.
According to a recent article in the Village Voice, Turkey itself created a militia organization outside of the regular Turkish army called the "Village Guards". Here is an excerpt from that article:
More than a decade ago, the Guclus and thousands of families like them made their deal with the military, which controlled the region under "emergency rule" and which sought to crush a Kurdish uprising. They became "provisional village guards," and for their allegiance against the Kurdistan Workers Party, a rebel group known as the PKK, they were armed and salaried by the state. Pawns in a game of divide and rule, these guards savagely turned on their neighbors.
Thousands more clans like the Tanguners and Tekins refused to join the militia. They fled. In all, at least 370,000 people were driven from their homes. Thirty thousand others died. Caught between the rebels and the state-sanctioned guards, countless Kurds were thrown in jails where they were raped, beaten, tortured, and starved.
Theirs is one of the great silent tragedies of the 20th century, and though emergency rule was lifted in November, the terror is far from over. Roughly 90,000 armed village guards remain in the countryside. Last year, former emergency rule governor Gokhan Aydiner said reducing the number of village guards was "out of the question." The government says it will allow their ranks to fade away by attrition.
That is happening all too slowly. Displaced families within Turkey are now prevented from returning to their homes because of the militias. If the U.S. military descends upon Baghdad, perhaps as many as 100,000 Kurds fleeing from Iraq into Turkey could face them, too. The Kurdish newspaper Ozgur Politika reported last week that among the Turkish troops heading for the border are 500 village guards belonging a special "Lightning Group." They've been sent, the paper said, for military training, and to prepare for deployment in refugee camps.
"Adding 500 hired guns subject to clan loyalties, with very untransparent lines of command and an institutional history of criminal activities ranging from theft and drug smuggling to rape and murder, is a genuinely awful idea," says Jonathan Sugden of Human Rights Watch. "That's about the worst thing they could do."
If it is objectionable for the Kurds to have a militia independent of the Iraqi government, then surely it is wrong to have a 90,000 strong militia group operating outside of the regular Turkish military for the purpose of supressing the independence movement. From the way the article describes it, the village guards sound a lot like the Protestant paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland.
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