Turkey prepares to stake claim in Iraq's oil fields - (It's the oil, stupid.)

UK Telegraph ^ | By Amberin Zaman in Ankara

[Happy2BMe]

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.

[Mortimer Snavely]

"... will placing even more Kurds under Turkish control actually solve their own Kurdish problem? Of course not."

Where did you learn to reason like this? Harvard? Princeton? It's frightenting to think that this sort of thinking determines our foreign policy.

[Happy2BMe]

"Where did you learn to reason like this? Harvard? Princeton?"

9/11 Crafter Khalid Sheik Mohammed highly educated in North Carolina - preferred Egyptian-born Americans

[illumini]

My intent was for it to sound more like: "Thanks for nothing Turkey, - we'll work with the Kurds to your dismay".

[justa-hairyape]

Iraq under Saddam was Socialist. This is no Vietnam. Think of what defending the teriritorial rights that arabs have to oil deposits, will do for us in the long run. The Turks stopped us from taking out Saddam in Gulf War 1. They have been allowing their neighbor Saddam to commit genocide on the Kurds.

[Mortimer Snavely]

"The Turks stopped us from taking out Saddam in Gulf War 1."

How so?

[justa-hairyape]

For the same reason they just refused to allow US Land Troops to launch an offensive from Turkey. They do not want the Kurds to live freely or to have even a hint of autonomy. The Turkey/Kurdish issue was one of the items cited as to why President Bush applied the brakes. That along with upsetting the Arab members within the coalition. Now hindsight is 20-20, but those two concerns are why Saddam was left in power. You should never leave a madman like that in power. In this case he plotted revenge and logistically supported anti-western terrorism. Not to mention his attacks on the Shiites and the Kurds

[Mortimer Snavely]

"They do not want the Kurds to live freely or to have even a hint of autonomy."

Marxist Kurdish revolutionaries in Northeren Iraq have killed tens of thousands of Turks. They claim about a third of Anatolia. Allowing them to establish a power base is very ill advised.

[hinckley buzzard]

"The Axis of Weasels, along with merely self-interested parties like Turkey..."

Not so fast. The Axis of Weasels is the core of the EU. Turkey has been grubbing about trying to get admittance to the EU. The Froggies and Krauts want no part of a moslem horde annexing itself to their wonderful sophisticated cultures.(Remember, citizens of EU nations can cross boundaries at will...)

Ah, but what if now come the Turks bearing gifts, such as the Northern Iraqi oilfields-- suddenly the Eurofascists have their very own internal source of oil wealth...

All the euro's have to do is ignore the obscene turkish human rights record, hold their noses, and vote Turkey in as an EU member...and it's a whole new economic ballgame...

[George W. Bush]

All the euro's have to do is ignore the obscene turkish human rights record, hold their noses, and vote Turkey in as an EU member...and it's a whole new economic ballgame...

Can't happen regardless of what they want.

1991: Saddam invades Kuwait, claiming it is a lost province of Iraq, seizes its oil.

2003: Turkey invades Iraq, claiming lost oil revenues from an 80 year old treaty and a dim claim on the Turkomen who reject their presence, seizes the oil.

Same result with Turkey as with Saddam. Turkey bombed back to stone age. Saddam was also our ally until he invaded oil country. Same as Turkey is our ally now.

You understand that everything Bush 1 (Spook Daddy) and Bush 2 (W.) have stood for and fought for in the Gulf would be completely repudiated by letting Turkey do this. Not to mention that the U.N. would be an accessory to it all if they didn't immediately authorize force to dislodge Turkey.

Oh, yes, Turkey would love to do this. They're colonizing Cyprus now. But even they aren't stupid enough to think they'll get away with it in oil country.

[hinckley buzzard]

"I don't think Turkish annexation arrangements will fly."

The Weasels run the EU. Turkey has been begging at the door for admission to the EU. The Frogs and Krauts, wanting no part of a wholesale moslem tidal wave across the now meaningless national borders, have stiffed them.

Let Turkey bring the northern Iraqi oilfields with them and suddenly the EU has it's own internal oil wealth.

All the euroturds will have to do is to hold their noses and vote turkey into the club, and it's a whole new global economic ballgame.

And who is going to protest...the UN?
Russia? China? With the Euro gaining major strength against a crashng dollar, the collective scum of the earth can finally collude to steal the march successfully on those mean old Americans...

[Mr.Clark]

GW and friends have said numerous times that we expect to secure Iraq's national sovereignty, including their current borders. If the Turks come south, they're going to set the area ablaze, because the Kurds will sense an oppurtunity. That will be bad for all parties involved.

[George W. Bush]

They do not want the Kurds to live freely or to have even a hint of autonomy.

A lot of Turks are part Kurd. There are a lot of Kurds who immigrated to Turkey. In '91, Turkey had a Kurd as president (remember him?).

It's complex, not just Kurd vs. Turk. The more radical Kurds in Iraq perceive that everybody is indifferent to their fate and that they need their own country for security. And they see the oil around the ancient Kurd "capital", Kirkuk, as the finance to make it possible. If they could establish a Kurdistan (Turkey's main fear), they could try to reclaim the land their tribes used to run on in large portions of Iran and in Turkey.

It's just not a simple situation ethnically and there really is no good solution at this point. And we can't fight any wars to change the ancient history of these people. Where would we stop?

The Kurds belong in a secure autonomous zone in northern Iraq, in confederation with Shiite and Sunni zones, all under a federal system in Baghdad. We've guaranteed to preserve the boundaries of Iraq and that's what we'll do. There will be no regional disintegration, no Kurdistan. No dinky little radical countries that can't defend themselves and become hotbeds of Islamic fundamentalism.

[justa-hairyape]

Allowing them to establish a power base is very ill advised.

There are no 100 % correct answers here. The points you make are probably some of the same ones that led the US to support Saddams Iraq initially. He provided stability even though it was a maniacal iron fisted stability. Just like the former Soviet Union provided stability to many of the nations within this region of the world and prior to them the Ottomon Empire. But what we are doing is denying an entire ethnicities ability to govern itself. In the long run, that cannot be the best solution. It certaintly is not the democratic one. Besides, history has shown that marxism eventually fails, even with oil money to support it.

[justa-hairyape]

There will be no regional disintegration, no Kurdistan. No dinky little radical countries that can't defend themselves and become hotbeds of Islamic fundamentalism.

You bring up some very good points. But is not the Middle East already full of 'dinky little radical countries'. Someone needs to keep Iran in check and needs to provide the freedom coalition a base with which to operate to prevent Iran from going nuclear. Kurdistan might actually be more stable then a democratic Iraq, which could end up being as politically reliable as democratic Turkey.

[George W. Bush]

A Kurdistan in northern Iraq would be too weak against Turkey and Iran, both of who have large territories that the Kurds claim as part of their homeland. To establish a Kurdistan is to invite war for many years to come.

Once we have our new bases in the new Iraq, we'll be able to handle some of these security and regional concerns for ourselves.

I don't really think we're just going to leave Iraq. But we'll have isolated bases by treaty, out of contact with the civilian population. Probably rotate staff on 4-month tours, no families.

[Happy2BMe]