11
April 2003
2. "Kurdish Leaders Order Fighters Out of Kirkuk", Iraqi Kurdish leaders say they have ordered their fighters to move out of the northern oil center of Kirkuk by the end of Friday in favor of U.S. command.
3. "A muddled message from an embattled new government", it is becoming unclear exactly what sort of country Turkey's prime minister, Tayyip Erdogan, hopes to build or how he wants to set about it.
4. "Fall of Kirkuk revives Turkey's fears of Kurdish independence", the seizure on Thursday of Kirkuk, one of two strategic oil cities in northern Iraqi, by US-backed Kurds has sharply revived fears in Turkey of a wider Kurkish bid for independence.
5. "Turkish Kurds, watching satellite TV, warily eye Kirkuk", passions have run high for weeks in Diyarbakir, scarcely 100 miles from Iraq’s northern border. But a satellite signal originating in Brussels may make Kurds on the Turkish side less likely to embrace their Iraqi counterparts than Ankara fears.
6. "Kurds in South Kurdistan wait to return", Kurdistanis who had been forced to migrate from Mossoul and Kirkuk to Dohuk, Hewler, Sulemania and Zaxo have started to return to their home lands.
1. - The Daily Star (Lebanon) - "Turkey and the Iraq conflict":
11 April 2003
The choice of Ankara as the destination for the US Secretary of State’s
first trip abroad since the Iraq war began is a powerful symbol of
the turbulence that has afflicted Turkish-US relations over recent
weeks. Though the platitudes at the end of the visit helped to bind
the wounds, they remain raw on both sides, and are unlikely to soothe
until the outcome of the Iraq conflict is clear.
The crisis in the relationship emerged in slow motion. It was as early
as spring 2002 that Vice-President Dick Cheney visited Ankara to talk
about the Bush administration’s plans for “regime change”
in Baghdad. It was early December that the two greatest Turcophiles
in Washington DC Paul Wolfowitz at Defense and Marc Grossman
at State first made a detailed proposal of what the US wanted.
The following three months saw Turkey besieged with follow-up missions
from the US.
The US sought two things of Turkey. First, the deployment of US troops
into northern Iraq via Turkish territory; in the end the two sides
seemed to have agreed on a figure of 62,000 soldiers. Second, the
use of the joint air bases from which to fly sorties against Iraq.
For the US these did not seem like outlandish requests. Afterall,
Turkey and the US have been fellow members of NATO since 1952. Moreover,
Turkish President Turgut Ozal had enthusiastically backed the US in
its efforts to confront Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in
August 1990. On that occasion the US had been allowed to use the joint
bases, while the Turkish Army tied down Iraqi forces just across the
border in a notional second front.
The first Gulf crisis taught insiders like Wolfowitz and Grossman
a lesson. Rather than becoming less important since the end of the
Cold War, regional conflicts like Iraq/Kuwait gave Turkey a new importance.
Subsequent events, such as the Bosnian war and the willingness of
the Turkish elite to embrace Israel, confirmed this.
Consequently, the US sought to invest in its relationship with Ankara.
A stream of high level visitors descended on Ankara. Washington vigorously
took up a favourite Turkish cause, the proposed Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline,
in its energy diplomacy. Bill Clinton paid his second longest visit
abroad as president (after China) to Turkey in November 1999. Amid
a catalogue of ham-fisted American diplomacy, Turkey was a success
story.
In spite of this warm backdrop to relations, the US was not complacent
in its approach to Turkey over Iraq. In recognition of the economic
losses sustained by Turkey as a result of the 1991 Gulf war and international
sanctions, the US put together a generous aid package.
In recognition of Turkish sensitivities over Kurdish self-assertion,
the Americans were prepared for some 40,000 Turkish troops to enter
northern Iraq by their side. Furthermore, the US continued to reiterate
that it was against the creation of a Kurdish state on principle.
Washington had effectively offered Ankara a veto over future political
arrangements in the northern part of its troubled neighbor.
That the negotiations were strung out over four months, and the idea
of a new Iraq war was deeply unpopular with the Turkish public, should
nevertheless have been a cause for deep US concern. In spite of these
warning signs, the substance on offer was deemed so good that Washington
could not quite believe it might fail.
Yet fail it did, in a vote of the Turkish Parliament on March 1. Even
then it seemed the situation could be saved, with Ankara dawdling
further in the belief that the Americans would not dare begin a war
without a proper second front. When the Turks belatedly realized this
view was mistaken, there was barely enough time to pass a much-modified
motion, permitting US flights over Turkish soil.
The next day war began.
With Americans still bemused at their failed diplomacy, how can one
explain Turkey’s refusal to cooperate? Three factors must be
considered. First, a crowded foreign policy agenda. This included
Turkey wrestling with the EU summit in Copenhagen last December, at
which the issue of a start date for membership talks was to be considered.
It also included Turkey becoming embroiled in a UN spearheaded attempt
to solve the Cyprus problem.
Second, the inexperience of the Turkish government, which only formed
an administration following the November election. Indeed, the Justice
and Development Party (AKP) that now dominates Parliament was only
itself established in 2001. The AKP, with its reliance on a motley
crew of informal advisers, managed to misread both UN dynamics and
US military calculations.
Third, the ideological tensions that underlie Turkish politics and
society, notably over the issue of secularism. For the AKP is an organization
the origins of which lie in Islamist politics, its defeated opponents
from last November being primarily secularist in orientation.
Fearful that its secular foes within the military might seek to oust
it from power, the AKP was desperate not to compromise its popularity
in the country, its guarantee of remaining in power. Ironically, the
secular opposition was also keen for the March 1 vote to fail to show
that the AKP was unreliable, and ill-placed to safeguard the country’s
national interest.
With the US feeling that Turkey has badly let it down, and the Turks
now deprived of a deal that would ameliorate its economic problems
and allay its fears of Kurdish separatism, the relationship is delicately
poised. It will take a lot more than a single visit by Colin Powell
to rebuild the trust of the past.
Philip Robins is a lecturer in politics and international relations
at the University of Oxford and a fellow of St. Antony’s College.
He is the author of Suits and Uniforms: Turkish Foreign Policy Since
the Cold War, and wrote this commentary for The Daily Star 
2. - Voice of America - "Kurdish Leaders Order Fighters Out of Kirkuk":
11 April 2003
Iraqi Kurdish leaders say they have ordered their fighters to move
out of the northern oil center of Kirkuk by the end of Friday in favor
of U.S. command.
Kurdish fighters backed by U.S. special forces swept into the city Thursday, setting off a huge celebration. Kurds pulled down statues of Saddam Hussein. They obliterated Saddam murals with bullets and paint and slashed his likeness with knives.
The Kurdish occupation of Kirkuk has sent a wave of deep concern across Turkey.
But U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell assured Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul by telephone Thursday that U.S. forces would soon be in charge of the city. He also said Turkey could send observers with U.S. units in Kirkuk to verify Washington's promise.
Ankara fears the Kurds will try to declare an independent Kurdistan with oil-rich Kirkuk as its capital and incite a Kurdish uprising inside Turkey.
Turkey has threatened to send thousands of troops into northern Iraq. But the United States has said it is dedicated to Iraq's territorial integrity.
A bloody rebellion by Kurdish separatists in southeastern Turkey
in the 1980s and 1990s killed more than 30,000 people. he Kurds say
they were promised an independent state that includes parts of Iraq,
Turkey, and Syria in a 1920 treaty.
3. - The Economist - "A muddled message from an embattled new government":
ISTANBUL / 10 April 2003
It is becoming unclear exactly what sort of country Turkey's prime minister, Tayyip Erdogan, hopes to build or how he wants to set about it
ONLY five months ago, millions of Turkish voters, fed up with the corruption and inefficiency of Turkey's old guard of aged politicians, gave the country its first single-party government in 15 years, under the aegis of a brand-new outfit, the Justice and Development Party. The markets were enthusiastic. The main index of Istanbul's battered stockmarket shot up, while interest rates fell below 50% for the first time in nearly a decade. Here at last, it seemed, was a strong government that could push through long-delayed economic and democratic reforms, settle the Cyprus problem and give Turkey a decisive shove towards joining the European Union.
But how fast things have changed—for the worse. Confidence in the party, better known by its Turkish initials AK, has begun to wear thin. The economy again looks wobbly, a UN-sponsored peace plan to reunite the Turkish and Greek bits of Cyprus is back on the shelf and, should the war in neighbouring Iraq drag on, its effects on Turkey could worsen sharply.
For all of this, AK, which has never tasted power before, should not take the whole blame. The war is badly hurting Turkey's multi-billion-dollar tourism industry, which, together with exports, earns most of Turkey's foreign exchange. It had been hoped that holiday-makers would bring in some $13 billion this year. “Small chance of that now,” groans Turkey's habitually cheery foreign minister, Abdullah Gul. Turkey's largest tour operator, Oger, which caters mainly for Germans, says that 90% of reservations for this season have been cancelled. In Turkey's impoverished Kurdish provinces in the south-east, trade with Iraq, the mainstay for thousands of families, has dried up.
True, ripostes AK's swelling army of detractors. But had Tayyip Erdogan, the AK leader who became prime minister only last month, managed to get parliament to push through a bill to let American troops attack Iraq from Turkish soil, the country's finances would have been in far better shape. When the AK-dominated parliament failed by just three votes to approve the bill, Turkey forfeited loans and grants from the United States worth $24 billion.
Now, in exchange for belatedly opening airspace to aircraft of the American-led coalition, a decision that rescued American-Turkish relations from breaking down altogether, the country may settle for $8 billion. Moreover, things could still go badly wrong, if Turkey's generals decided to invade northern Iraq to stop the Kurds grabbing oilfields near Kirkuk. The Americans have told the Turks not to, as the Kurds have promised they would fight back.
Turkey can ill afford another bust-up with George Bush's administration, whose support remains essential if the IMF is to continue to help. The country has to roll over total debt repayments due this year worth $93.5 billion, of which some $80 billion is short-term domestic debt. With inflation creeping back up (to nearly 30% at the latest annualised monthly rate) and interest rates on the rise once again too, “the main concern now”, says Atif Cezairli, head of research in Istanbul for ING, a Dutch bank, “is whether the government can continue to service its debt by successfully lowering real interest rates.”
That in turn depends on whether the government can restore confidence in the markets. They, however, fell precipitously earlier this year, when, in a bout of populism, the government raised civil-service pensions and wages without explaining where the money to pay for them would come from. It also failed to explain how it would pay for fresh subsidies pledged to sugarbeet producers and for 15,000km (9,325 miles) of new motorways.
Still, with less American cash on offer than before, the government may have regained a new sense of fiscal prudence and has now promised to cut spending and raise taxes. As a result, the IMF has agreed to disburse a loan of $1.6 billion as part of a stand-by deal worth $16 billion. But instead of releasing the money in one go, as it normally does, the Fund will do so bit by bit to ensure that the government sticks to its word.
More hopeful are AK's continuing efforts to make Turkey more democratic. Last month's banning of Hadep, the country's largest pro-Kurdish party, on the flimsy charge that it was acting as a front for the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), the main separatist guerrilla group in Turkey, hardly seems to bear that out, but that case against Hadep was in fact launched under a previous government. In contrast, the new parliament has approved a clutch of sweeping constitutional reforms that will make it much harder to shut down parties and easier to prosecute torturers.
Gone, too, is a much-ridiculed ban on the use of the letter W, which exists in the Kurdish alphabet but not the Turkish one—and landed many a Kurdish publisher in court. Parliament is also expected to pass a bill to scrap reduced jail sentences for “honour crimes”, which usually involve men murdering unmarried female relations, sometimes even for such “offences” as going to the cinema with a member of the opposite sex. Parliament is also likely to soften laws on broadcasting in Kurdish.
It will be much harder, however, to reduce the lingering influence of Turkey's generals on politics. They still tell the minister of defence what to do. They even—when it comes to Cyprus—appear to give orders to the prime minister.
Mr Erdogan deserves credit for trying, before he became prime minister last month, to persuade the Turkish-Cypriot leader, Rauf Denktash, to sign the latest peace plan proposed by the UN. The generals, who cherish the island's Turkish part as a strategic asset, promptly slapped him down. On this point, the country's president, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, who sees the generals as the guarantor of Turkey's secular system, is their sturdy ally. Moreover, Mr Sezer has used his power to delay a number of appointments of AK nominees to senior posts in the civil service, on the ground that they are not qualified. More likely, it is because their association with Mr Erdogan dates back to the days when he was a member of an overtly Islamist party banned on charges that it sought to overturn the secular order.
It is plainly hard for Mr Erdogan to decide where his loyalties ultimately
lie. The religious conservatives who have backed him already accuse
him of betraying his Islamist ideals. On the other hand, though his
own wife and those of half his cabinet cover their heads with scarves
in the traditional Muslim manner, Mr Erdogan says that the symbolic
issue of whether the headscarf may be worn in public places, long
a touchstone for secularists who abhor the practice, is not especially
important to his government. As the AK continues to muddle along in
government, many Turks are puzzled. They wonder just what are its
priorities—and Mr Erdogan's.
4. - AFP - "Fall of Kirkuk revives Turkey's fears of Kurdish independence":
by Burak Akinci
ANKARA / 10 April 2003
The seizure on Thursday of Kirkuk, one of two strategic oil cities
in northern Iraqi, by US-backed Kurds has sharply revived fears in
Turkey of a wider Kurkish bid for independence.
Ankara -- which has threatened to intervene militarily in northern
Iraq if local Kurds are allowed to take over Kirkuk or Mosul -- again
warned on Thursday that any bid by the Kurds to retain permanent control
of Kirkuk would be inadmissible.
"It would be unacceptable if they (the Kurds) entered the town
to take control and set up an administration," a senior diplomat
at the Turkish foreign ministry told AFP on Thursday on condition
of anonymity.
"We will do what is necessary. Turkey's position is open and
clear," warned Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, in a statement
quoted by Anatolia news agency.
Ankara fears that if the Iraqi Kurds wrest control of Iraqi oil resources
they could seek independence, triggering a similar move among the
restless fellow Kurds just across the border in southern Turkey.
Fighting between the Turkish army and the country's separatist Kurds
caused more than 36,000 deaths between 1984 and 1999. Violence has
since subsided in southeastern Turkey but Ankara is taking no chances.
Kirkuk is a prized target for the Kurds and has been designated as
PUK capital by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) -- one of the
Kurdish groups controlling the part of Iraq just north and east of
Kirkuk and Mosul.
Iraqi Kurds lay claim to Kirkuk and Mosul, saying they were in the
majority there before the cities were taken over by Arabs under the
regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
Apart from a brief period when it was siezed by the Kurds during the
1991 Gulf war, the city has to date remained under Baghdad's control.
Saddam sought to reduce Kurdish influence in Kirkuk in the late 1970s
by settling Arabs there and driving out millions of its Kurdish residents
and the ethnic Turkic minority -- the Turkmens.
Ankara, which says it must defend the Turkmens, warned on Thursday
against any attempt by the Kurds to modify the city's ethnic make-up.
Turkey's fears about the future of Kirkuk and Mosul have been exacerbated
by tensions with Washington over the Ankara parliament's refusal to
allow US troops invade Iraq from its territory.
Last week US Secretary of State Colin sought to assuage Ankara's concerns,
while simultaneously warning against any Turkish intervention in northern
Iraq. "There is no need for any movement of Turkish forces across
the border," Powell told a joint news conference with Gul in
Ankara.
"We have been able to stabilize the situation in the way that
I think will keep the likelihood of a need for an incursion very much
under control."
Gul told NTV television on Thursday the United States had pledged
to send in fresh troops to replace the Kurds who had moved into Kirkuk
and that the two sides had agreed Turkish military observers should
be sent there to verify whether the Kurdish forces were indeed leaving.
"He (Powell) said they would send new US forces to Kirkuk in
a few hours.
They will take out those who have entered," Gul said.
"We will have military observers there... They (the United States)
made the offer and we accepted it," he added.
Defence Minister Vecdi Gonul said earlier on Thursday US forces had
promised that Kurdish fighters would only be allowed to enter Kirkuk
under US command, Anatolia news agency reported.
"The coalition has kept its promises. I think it will continue
to do so," he said.
"Ankara refuses to envisage the possibility that the United States
might not keep its word," Turksih dailty newspaper Milliyet commented
on Thursday.
Fighting between the Turkish army and separatist Kurds in the southeast
of the country caused more than 36,000 deaths between 1984 and 1999.
Although violence has since subsided, Turkey's Kurdish population
still bears the scars of the torture, extra-judicial executions, looting
and disappearances that were commonplace during the war years.
Last year, Turkey introduced a series of democratic reforms to smarten
up its European Union membership bid, many of which aimed to expand
the rights of the country's 10 to 15 million Kurds.
Under the reform program, Ankara loosened severe restrictions on its
Kurdish population, allowing the Kurdish language to be taught in
private schools, and broadcast on radio and television.
EU leaders, who are to review Ankara's entry bid in December 2004,
have broadly welcomed the measures, although key sticking points remain
such as the imprisonment of prominent Kurdish rights campaigner Leila
Zana.
But Kurdish political leaders claim the reforms, tailored to meet
EU membership criteria, are no more than skin-deep and that little
has been done to implement the new rights.
"Until now, we have seen none of the promised improvements. Laws
have been passed but it all remains at the paper stages," insisted
Haci Uzen, head of the pro-Kurdish Democratic People's Party (DEHAP)
in the southeastern town of Silopi.
"These laws are essentially designed to enhance Turkey's image
throughout the European Union, not to improve the condition of the
Kurds. Turkey just wants to show the face the European Union wants
to see," said a Kurdish lawyer on condition of anonymity.
In practice, Turkey's Kurds are often still denied the most basic
cultural rights. This year, like many years before, Kurdish Newroz,
or New Year, celebrations were banned in many cities.
Last month, Turkey's constitutional court banned the country's main
Kurdish party, the People's Democracy Party (HADEP) for alleged links
with separatist rebels and launched proceedings against DEHAP, its
sister party, sparking sharp criticism from the European Union and
rights groups.
And during the build-up to the war in Iraq, Ankara sent massive police
and army reinforcements to the Kurdish-majority regions of the southeast,
and placed tight restrictions on foreign journalists working in the
area.
"Moves towards democracy here are largely theoretical. Of course,
Turkey compares favourably to other Middle Eastern countries, but
not to Western Europe," said the lawyer.
"European warnings (to Turkey) are essential and should be reiterated,"
he said.
Zehra Deniz, whose husband founded the Silopi branch of DEHAP, has
not heard from her husband since he was taken into army custody more
than two years ago.
Ebubekir Deniz and another DEHAP official vanished on March 25, 2001,
after they were summoned to the regional army headquarters.
"My husband has vanished into thin air. I try to understand but
there is no way of knowing what has happened to him," said Zehra,
who has come up against a wall of silence from the authorities.
"I am waiting for his return... but that hope is probably an
illusion."
Under Turkish law, 20-year-old Zehra cannot remarry until her husband
has been confirmed dead, and relies on her unemployed brother for
financial help.
5. - Eurasianet - "Turkish Kurds, watching satellite TV, warily eye Kirkuk":
by Nicolas Birch / 10 April 2003
Kurdish forces reportedly took control of the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk on April 10, a day after central Baghdad came under the effective control of American-led tanks. Turkey, after discussions with US Secretary of State Colin Powell, announced plans to send "observers" to the area to make sure Kurds do not try to set up a government. Ankara is concerned that the Kurds of northern Iraq may spill into cities like Diyarbakir and, echoing separatist groups like the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), seek to carve out an independent state. Passions have run high for weeks in Diyarbakir, scarcely 100 miles from Iraq’s northern border, for weeks. But a satellite signal originating in Brussels may make Kurds on the Turkish side less likely to embrace their Iraqi counterparts than Ankara fears.
"Iraq’s future can’t be entrusted to Iraqi Kurds – they’re tribes, not democrats," says the elderly Abdulaziz, one of several ethnic Kurds in a Diyarbakir cafe. The young man beside him, Sehmus, butts in: "the only reason their leaders aren’t begging for Turkish money is that the United States is filling their pockets with dollars." These are common sentiments among Turkish officials, who watch Iraqi Kurdish military cooperation with American-led forces with growing concern. On April 10, according to reports, some 100 American soldiers directed several hundred Kurdish fighters in the seizure of Kirkuk in northern Iraq. Officials worry that the sight of such close collaboration may stir pan-Kurdish aspirations among Turkey’s own restive Kurdish minority. Many cafe patrons had to flee their villages during the Turkish state’s 15-year war with the PKK. Yet, while they oppose Turkish plans to send troops into northern Iraq, their solidarity with Kurds in Iraq is, at best, lukewarm.
Nine months after laws were passed permitting limited radio and television broadcasts in minority languages like Kurdish, Turkish television is still exclusively Turkish. But most patrons of the Diyarbakir cafe – and most Kurds in Turkey – could not care less. Since 1994, anybody with enough money to buy a satellite dish and decoder has been able to watch Kurdish programming 24 hours a day, beamed in from the Brussels headquarters of Medya-TV. "Thanks to Medya, our only reason for watching Turkish TV now is to see how much it lies," says Muzaffer, a patron of the cafe. "Only Medya is objective, the eyes and ears of our people."
"Of course I would disapprove if Turkish forces clashed with the Kurdish militia," says Muzaffer, adding that he "might go to a press conference [in protest]." This is hardly the sort of reaction that the government fears, but his friends nod their agreement. "We have no faith in [Iraqi Kurdish] leaders Jalal Talabani and Massoud Barzani, you see," Muzaffer continues. "The Kurds’ only real hope is in prison in Imrali Island."
Muzaffer is referring to PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, in solitary confinement since 1999 off the coast of Istanbul. [For background, see the Eurasia Insight archive]. These men see Iraqi Kurds as enemies of their hero, Ocalan. PKK fighters have been since the early 1990s in northern Iraq; de facto autonomous Kurdish authorities there have sometimes collaborated with Ankara’s attempts to flush the combustible PKK out of its Iraqi mountain bases. Although the PKK now consists of roughly 4,000 fighters in camps on Iraq’s border with Iran, it uses a secret weapon to retain Turkish Kurds’ loyalty: the innumerable satellite dishes clustered on roofs throughout the region.
Turkish Kurds sometimes seem more devoted to Medya than to traditions. "I sold one of my three cows to buy the equipment," says Sabri Hatipoglu, a villager in the north of Diyarbakir province. "Medya is the only channel which deals with issues relevant to me and my people," he says. "It has transformed our image of ourselves." Like Al Jazeera, the independent Qatar-based news service by which many in the Arab world swear, Medya has provoked some charges of bias. "Like its predecessor Med-TV, Medya is the mouthpiece of the PKK," says Celal Baslangic, an expert on Kurdish affairs who writes for the liberal newspaper Radikal. "Most people only watch it because there’s nothing else on."
In years past, Ankara cracked down on its audiences in an attempt to squelch PKK propaganda. Satellite dishes were regularly smashed and their owners arrested for "incitement to separatist hatred." Med-TV, which had operated out of London, shut down per orders of the British government after Turkish diplomats accused it of inciting terrorism in 1999. The service reappeared later in Belgium. In recent years, Ankara seems grudgingly to have accepted Medya’s existence.
Like the degree of danger Ankara faces from an unstable Kirkuk, Medya’s psychological effects are very hard to calculate. Kemal Kirisci, a political scientist at Istanbul’s Bogazici University and author of several books on Turkey’s Kurdish question, says the government’s indulgence toward the service "has to do with the realization that its propaganda has little ideological effect on its audience." Yet Bayram Bozyel, the Diyarbakir representative of a small Kurdish party strongly critical of the PKK’s ex-Marxist cadres, voices the opposite suspicion. "Quite frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if Medya was working with Ankara," he says, half-joking. "By presenting Kurds in Iraq as the enemy, people not supporting the PKK as the enemy, Medya has done an excellent job dividing the Kurdish people."
Of course, another dividing factor may be simple geography. "Medya indoctrination is stronger the further you get from the Iraqi border," adds Kendal Nezan, director of the Kurdish Institute in Paris. "Down in the frontier region of Silopi and Cizre, families overlap the border, and years of close economic links have brought the two sides together." Further towards Ankara, Kurds seem more unified in their fealty to Medya – a faithfulness that may keep Kurdish nationalism from becoming the roar that Ankara fears.
Editor’s Note: Nicolas Birch is a journalist specializing
in Turkish affairs.
6. - The Kurdish Observer - "Kurds in South Kurdistan wait to return":
Kurdistanis who had been forced to migrate from Mousul and Kirkuk to Duhok, Hewler, Sulemania and Zaxo have started to return to their home lands.
by Mehmet Yaman
Zaxo / 10 April 2003
Kurds living in Mousul and Kirkuk wereforced to migrate by the Iraqi regime in 1975-80 and again in 1992, their lands were confiscated and settled by Arabs. Hundreds of Kurds were forcibly displaced. The Iraqi regime allowed those who stayed in the region to continue to live there on the condition of becoming an Arab.
A number of Kurds have applied to the UN representative office time and again but have been replied “This region is under the control of the Iraqi regime, therefore we cannot do anything for the time being.” The UN has managed to settle some in Duhok, Hewler, Zaxo and Akre temporarily. Now the people want to return to their lands and organize gatherings to convince UN and local administrators to take steps on the matter.
Names are listed
The local administrators approach the matter with sympathy but there are no offical steps yet. Village heads organize committees and list the names of the Kurds who have been forced to migrate. Some of the clan heads and Kurdish notables are said to be determined to return whatever the stance of the local administrators may be.
The tribes Mira, Musaresi, Hesina and Gergeri and Ezidis of Singal have the first place among the migrants. The names of the places where hundreds of Kurds have been evicted from are: Mousul, Kirkuk, Singal, Zimare, Tilkif, Zirhatya, Xahekin, Mendeli, Rebia, Bedrike and other villages and hamlets.
People have become beggars
On the other hand thousands of people who had migrated from Mousul and the surrounding region after the war struggle to survive under the most difficult conditions. Most of the Kurdish and Arabish immigrants trie to live by begging in Zaxo and Akre. It is possible to see a number of people who buy their bread by selling their gold rings and other valuable belongings. They complain that not even a camp has been set up for them. Some of them stay with their relatives.
They have not yet received any humanitarian aid. They said that only their names were listed and the food was not distributed but remained in depots.
Churches aid Christians and Armenians
Churches support Christians who have come from Baghdad, Mousul and
Kirkuk. Hundreds of Armenians and thousand of Assyrians and Chaldeans
were given aid by the churches. The Christians live with their relatives
and other Christians in Zaxo, Duhok and other villages and districts
nearby.