18 April 2005

1. "Kurdish Rebels: If the military operations do not stop, we shall spread the war throughout Turkey", 121 Turkish soldiers have died while 14 Kurdish guerrillas have lost their lives as the result of the 17 day clashes.

2. "Twisted Turkey", the recent events that have taken place following the dubious flag burning incident have yet again exposed Turkey to more criticism and scrutiny by the EU.

3. "Turks' revived passion for flag raises red one in EU", in the eastern city of Erzurum, the German ambassador stopped before cutting a cake decorated with the German and Turkish flags after being warned that it could signify disrespect and lead to prosecution.

4. "Author assailed for acknowledging Armenian massacre", lifting the veil: Fellow Turks criticize Orhan Pamuk for bringing up dark history.

5. "What Will The ECHR Decide About?", the ECHR's decision regarding the Öcalan case will not be about re-trial, but on the right to a fair trial. Mostly these two are confused.

6. "A momentary hiccup", one should not be overly surprised if an outside observer thinks that US-Turkish relations are on a downward slide.

7. "Pro-EU Talat takes lead in Cyprus polls", Turkish Cypriot Premier Mehmet Ali Talat has taken a strong lead in voting for the new leader of the breakaway state, according to early results.

8. "Arabs and Turkmen fear Kurdish control of Kirkuk", the northern oil city of Kirkuk, a melting pot of rival communities, reflects in miniature Iraq’s turbulent make-up -- dominated by suspicion, frustration and squabbling.

1. - MHA - "HPG (People’s Defence Forces): If the military operations do not stop, we shall spread the war throughout Turkey":

BEHDINAN / 17 April 2005 / translated by the International Initiative

HPG Central Commandership has said in a statement that the widespread operations especially encompassing Botan and all the other regions of Kurdistan, which began early March, is still continuing. HPG states that the Turkish army incurred heavy casualties but is hiding its losses. HPG in its statement has also warned that if these operations which aim annihilation do not stop then they shall spread the clashes throughout Turkey. It has been stated that 121 soldiers from the Turkish army have died while 14 guerrillas have lost their lives as the result of the 17 day clashes.

HPG Central Commandership has released the outcome of the clashes between 1st of April and 17th of April 2005 to be:

• Number operations in Botan and Amed: 11
• Number of operations by the Iranian Army: 1
• Number of clashes with the Turkish Army: 46
• Retaliation: 2
• Number of losses of the Turkish Army: 121 (6 officers, 115 soldiers)
• Number if military goods incurred: 12 (one BKC and its ammunition, two M-16 and its drum, one Dragunov and one Binoculars, one night binoculars, one compass, 4 bombs, two watches)
• Number of vehicles destroyed: 1
• Number of guerrillas which lost their lives: 14

2. - Kurdistan Observer - "Twisted Turkey":

BRUSSELS / 14 April 2005 / by Adil Al-Baghdadi

The recent events that have taken place following the dubious flag burning incident have yet again exposed Turkey to more criticism and scrutiny by the EU.

The one incident that clearly showed how twisted things are in Turkey is when a group of four members of a recognized NGO were distributing leaflets calling for an end to anti-human right measures in Turkish prisons were brutally beaten and were seconds away from being ripped apart by an angry lynch mob of about 200 people in Trabzon.

Turkish police stood by and watched the mob rule closing in and beating the right activists and only intervened once they saw that it might result in killing and mutilation.

After being beaten severely the four were whisked away with great difficulty, needless to say the police did not arrest any of those who took part in the lynching and only used a loudhailer to tell the angry crowd to disperse.

In any country within the EU an incident like this would have led to serious public debate, inquiry and would have been preceded by vigorous pursuit of justice and unwavering search for gang leaders among the mob who incited against the four human right campaigners.

Then again, any police force within EU member states would have made immediate arrests among those who took part in the lynching and those who incited, aided and abetted and caused serious physical harm.

Then they would have been brought before the courts to face criminal charges which might have included disturbing peace and denying freedom of expression and all other rights associated campaigning peacefully in public places, among other serious criminal acts.

In short, this incident would have been dealt with in a manner that completely contrasts with the way Turkish government, judiciary and police handled this serious crime, whose responsibility lies with every level of the country which allowed unspeakable human right abuses for long time.

However, the more outlandish aspect of this incident is those who were severely beaten and their human and democratic rights violated ended up answering for crimes committed by their perpetrators and were charged for instigating a mob rule.

However, the incident is not isolated and the apparent indifference of the government and judiciary is evident of how Turkey has been routinely turning a blind eye to gross violations of human rights for more than 80 years.

This comes against the backdrop of new freedoms and boldness by Kurds in Turkey to exercise their cultural and political rights.

The celebration of Kurdish New Year Nawroz has sounded the alarm bell within Turkey’s ultra-nationalistic institution, the powerful military establishment, whose influence has been eroded by the government and by numerous EU adaptation packages.

So in order to stifle the natural progression for Kurds to practise their newly acquired, albeit limited rights, dark forces within Turkey’s military and intelligence establishment plotted to mar Kurdish New Year celebrations with an incident that could easily galvanize all Turkey against Kurds.

Thus, in very suspicious circumstances two young boys in Mersin were seen across Turkey TV channels running a mock with a Turkish flag and then tried to set it light.

Upon their arrest the pair, who aged between 12 and 13 years, were questioned by the police and both said they were approached by a man who handed them the flag and told them to burn it.

This well planned attempt to stir Turkish public sentiments and fervour against Kurds was further played out to wider audience through the usual nationalistic diatribe spewed out by traditionally anti-Kurds media.

Although the incident was condemned by almost all Kurdish leaders in Turkey it was nevertheless amazingly manipulated by none more than the military establishment.

The most powerful institution in Turkey issued a statement and warning about tampering with national symbols in which it referred to Kurds as so-called citizens.

Thus, it implicitly paved they way and gave cart-blanche for any reprisal action on any individual or group who is perceived to be a Kurds or supporter of Kurdish rights or defender of any rights for that matter.

The people on that day in Trabzon who turned so viciously on the human right campaigners were told that the four belonged to the same group of those who desecrated the Turkish flag.

The guardian of the constitution and the custodian of the well being of state of Turkey, the Turkish military establishment has in effect issued a statement encouraging incitement against Kurds.

The environment of fear and hate created by ethnic strife should have been capitalized upon by the government in order to reign in on ultra-nationalistic elements within Turkey who are hampering Turkey’s acceptance to EU.

The inter-ethnic relations have always been precarious in Turkey especially now as the government is forced to take well over due steps to recognize Kurdish rights in North Kurdistan and the genocide of the Armenians.

These incidents have exposed the fragility of Turkish state, which has been built on absolute dominance of one race over others, particularly the second largest population the Kurds.

The only way forward is to rebuild the country on strong foundation of equality between races and to recognize full rights of other nations within Turkey, and more importantly to embrace human rights as a cornerstone of the new society.

Perhaps Turkey can take lessons from its southern neighbour Iraq which although not a candidate for EU has nearly fulfilled all the criteria required to join the much-prized club membership, while Turkey is still trying to come to terms with EU’s adaptation and harmonization packages.

3. - The Chicago Tribune - "Turks' revived passion for flag raises red one in EU":

TRABZON / 17 April 2005 / By Catherine Collins

The people of this country take their red-and-white flag particularly seriously these days.

Even the false rumor that students passing out leaflets here in this Black Sea port planned to burn a flag prompted angry young men to flood the main square. They hunted down the five students and beat them bloody before police intervened.

In the eastern city of Erzurum, the German ambassador stopped before cutting a cake decorated with the German and Turkish flags after being warned that it could signify disrespect and lead to prosecution.

And when two boys had dragged a flag through the streets of Mersin in southern Turkey a couple of weeks earlier, it touched off a wave of patriotism. Buses, horse-drawn carts and buildings across the country were festooned with the white crescent and star on a red background.

The outpouring of nationalism worries some political observers and diplomats. They suggest it raises issues about whether Turkey's reform-minded government is stumbling and about the country's compatibility with the European Union, which it is seeking to join.

"The nationalism that you see now is just one of the many expressions of unease and discontent in a situation where the country temporarily seems rudderless," said a Western diplomat who asked that his name be withheld because of the sensitivity of the subject.

Since December, when the EU gave Turkey a green light to start membership talks in October, the ruling Justice and Development Party seems to have lost its momentum. Eight parliament members have defected, including a Cabinet minister, and efforts to pass reforms have stalled.

The incident in Trabzon earlier this month catalyzed concerns.

The university students were passing out leaflets calling for prison reform when they were attacked and beaten. The police eventually intervened, arresting the students and letting their attackers go.

Police said the melee was touched off when two teenagers shouted that the students intended to burn a Turkish flag. After the beating, about 2,000 people marched to the police station waving flags.

A group of men who witnessed the incident said that there was also a rumor that the students were supporters of the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK.

Mehmet Kaan Mazlum, a shopkeeper and witness, said Trabzon is a conservative town with a great love for the flag and none for the PKK, which has resumed low-level violence in the southeast part of the country in recent months.

The students who were passing out the leaflets accused the police of standing by during the early stages of the incident.

Any idea that tempers would cool disappeared four days later on April 10 when a small group demonstrating in support of the jailed students was attacked by a mob in Trabzon.

"The second incident happened only because those people didn't learn their lesson the first time around," said a policeman who refused to give his name.

Trabzon is a Black Sea outpost far from the media center of Istanbul and the political capital of Ankara, and the incidents might have faded quickly except that Turks were already on edge.

During an annual Kurdish festival in Mersin late last month, a 12-year-old and a 13-year-old dragged a Turkish flag through the streets. President Ahmet Necdet Sezer called the boys' action "treasonous," and the Turkish military vowed to defend the flag with its "last drop of blood."

Analysts said that the widespread reaction to the flag incidents reflected a sense among many Turks that they feel slighted by Europe's treatment of the country and angry with their old ally, the United States.

In response, they have sought a haven in a resurgence of the nationalism on which Ataturk founded modern Turkey in 1923.

"Turkish nationalism is a mainstream ideology," said Nilufer Narli, a sociology professor at Kadir Has University in Istanbul.

But the nationalism worries Europeans, who have tried to build the EU by rejecting nationalism in favor of shared values and reduced sovereignty.

Hansjoerg Kretschmer, the EU envoy in Ankara, said he was "following the events in Trabzon with great concern."

Since the EU's Dec. 17 vote to start membership negotiations with Turkey, Europeans have criticized the pace of reform in the country.

The outbursts and the government's responses have indicated to some analysts that Turkey may face an internal hurdle to EU membership that is greater than overcoming suspicions of some of its potential new partners.

Still, no one is quite sure how seriously to take this resurgence of nationalism. But in a country with three military coups in its recent history, there is no shortage of concern and conspiracy theories.

"Those in favor of the `closed society' secreted beneath the umbrella of the state apparatus are attempting to win back the prestige and position they lost during the struggle of the government to liberalize Turkey before the Dec. 17 summit," wrote Cuneyt Ulsever, a columnist in the mainstream Turkish Daily News.

4. - AP - "Author assailed for acknowledging Armenian massacre":

Lifting the veil: Fellow Turks criticize Orhan Pamuk for bringing up dark history

ANKARA / 17 April 2005 / by Louis Meixler

When a leading Turkish novelist said earlier this year that 1 million Armenians were murdered in his country during World War I, he broke a deep taboo.

Three lawsuits were filed against Orhan Pamuk, accusing him of damaging the state. ’’He shouldn’t be allowed to breathe,’’ roared one nationalist group. In Istanbul, a school collected his books from students to return to him. On a news Web site, the vote ran 4-1 against him.

Turkey’s mass expulsion of Armenians during World War I - which Armenians say was part of a genocide that claimed 1.5 million lives - is a dark chapter rarely discussed in Turkey or taught in its schools.

But slowly the veil is being lifted. One reason is that Turkey is more open and democratic today, another is its ambition of joining the European Union; French President Jacques Chirac has said Turkey must first acknowledge the killings.

Turkey is also eager to counter Armenian diaspora groups that are pushing European governments and the United States to declare the killings genocide. And the approach of April 24, the 90th anniversary of the date Armenians mark as the start of the killings, is focusing attention on the issue.

’’We are mutually deaf to each other,’’ said Yasar Yakis, head of parliament’s European Union Affairs Committee, who invited two ethnic Armenians in Istanbul to address his committee.

’’Perhaps if we can create a climate in which we listen to what the other side has to say, we might meet in the middle,’’ Yakis said.

Turkey has long denied the genocide claim, saying the death toll of 1.5 million is wildly inflated and that both Armenians and Turks were killed in fighting during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Turks who describe it as genocide have on occasion been prosecuted, and Turkey often gets into diplomatic tussles with governments it suspects of taking the Armenian side. It’s one of the reasons Turkey and neighboring Armenia don’t have diplomatic relations.

Turkey also fears that if the genocide claim is recognized, Armenians will use it to demand compensation - either money or lost land.

Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul insists that to call it genocide is ’’pure slander,’’ and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that all countries should open their archives to scholars to examine whether the event was genocide.

A Turkish-Armenian Reconciliation Committee, partly funded by the U.S. State Department, first met in 2001, bringing together leading Turks and Armenians, while intellectuals such as Pamuk, whose novels have won critical acclaim in the United States, are playing a key role in opening up the debate.

For Turkey, the issue goes beyond the killings of Armenians to the whole trauma of losing its once mighty Ottoman Empire.

As the Muslim empire faltered, minority Armenian Christians began asserting their identity. During World War I, amid fears of Armenian collusion with the enemy army of Christian Czarist Russia, Armenians were forced out of towns and villages throughout the Turkish heartland of Anatolia and many died.

’’The Armenians were relocated because they cooperated with the enemy, the Russians, and they . . . killed Ottoman soldiers from behind the lines,’’ Yakis, the lawmaker, said.

Armenians, however, say the killings were part of a planned genocide.
Volkan, a professor emeritus of psychiatry at the University of Virginia, said that after the war, the new Turkish republic ’’wanted to look forward and not backward.’’

Pamuk dropped his bombshell in February in an interview with the Swiss newspaper Tagesanzeiger, talking of Armenians as well as Turkey’s modern-day Kurdish minority.

He said that ’’30,000 Kurds have been murdered here and 1 million Armenians and nobody dares to mention that. So I do it. And that’s why they hate me.’’

The reaction to Pamuk was largely hostile, but a few newspaper columnists defended his freedom of speech.

5. - Bianet - "What Will The ECHR Decide About?":

The ECHR's decision regarding the Öcalan case will not be about re-trial, but on the right to a fair trial. Mostly these two are confused.

ISTANBUL / 14 April 2005 / by Tolga Korkut

The ECHR’s decision will concern whether PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan’s right to a fair trial is violated or not. However, there is a general misperception that the ECHR will take decision on re-trial.

Professor Ozan Özerden of the Yildiz Technical University in Istanbul says that the ECHR can give two kinds of decisions:

* Determine whether the violation of a right occurred or not.

* If the results of the violation cannot be compensated otherwise, reward damages.

Currently, the Öcalan case pends before the 17 judge jury of the Grand Chamber. Previously, the case was heard in the Small Chamber and the decision was declared against Turkey in March 2003. As a result of the appeal, the case was passed onto the Grand Chamber.

Legal experts say that the Grand Chamber will adopt a similar stance with the previous court. Marmara University’s Professor Sibel Inceoglu, says that the Grand Chamber’s decision will most probably be closed to appeals.

6. - bitterlemons-international.org - "A momentary hiccup":

14 April 2005 / by Henri J. Barkey*

One should not be overly surprised if an outside observer thinks that US-Turkish relations are on a downward slide. A series of press articles in the US media of late have highlighted the strident anti-American rhetoric in the Turkish media. Much has also been made of a newly published Turkish novel depicting an American invasion of Turkey and the successful Turkish resistance. Against the backdrop of differences on Iraq policy, the American press has implicitly questioned the very nature of the Turkish-American alliance, one that dates to the beginning of the Cold War.

It is true that the Turkish press is replete with vitriolic attacks on the US. As an added flavor, many of these articles also carry anti-Semitic (as distinct from anti-Israeli) messages. Accusations against the US range from deliberately causing the Asian Tsunami to instigating riots in Turkey and trying to carve up the country. Opinion polls also show that President Bush is disliked by some 82 percent of the Turkish public, the highest among America’s allies.

Anti-Americanism in Turkey is not new and, therefore, the latest diatribes in the Turkish media have to be taken in stride. What is different from the US perspective, however, is the contamination of the political and bureaucratic elite’s discourse by such sentiments. This was most apparent when a leading member of the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) accused the US of committing genocide in Falluja, or when a senior military commander directly accused the US of complicity in the murder of Turkish special agents traveling through northern Iraq. Equally unfathomable was the accusation by the main opposition leader that the emergence of a challenger against his leadership in his own party was a plot concocted in Washington. It appears that he convinced himself that the US administration, bent on revenge for the failure of the March 1, 2003 parliamentary vote seeking authorization for the opening of a second front against Iraq, decided to target him. As incorrect or stupendous as were these charges, almost no one in a Turkish leadership position had the courage to challenge them.

At the heart of this new wave of anti-Americanism in Turkey lies a deep sense of anxiety and uncertainty about the radical changes in Turkey’s political environment and domestic politics. Different groups have embraced this discourse for their own particular reasons. Although the unpopularity of the war in Iraq and unbecoming US conduct play a major role, they are not the sole reason. After all, the war is unpopular in many other countries.

The change began immediately after 9/11. Just as in the Arab world, many in Turkey were deeply disturbed by the image of a confrontation between the West and Islam that these attacks seemed to conjure. Unable to accept al-Qaeda’s role, those sympathetic to Islamist causes sought to blame their usual suspects, CIA, Mossad etc. The glow that President Clinton had created in Turkey with his 1999 visit and his decision to deliver to the Turks the fugitive leader of the Kurdish insurgency on a silver platter was extinguished almost overnight.

The war in Iraq and the ensuing insurgency refocused Turkey’s attention on the Kurds. Ankara has always feared the contagion effect of Kurdish independence and autonomy in northern Iraq, and had made it its solemn cause to prevent either of these from materializing. The emergence of the Iraqi Kurds as an important, if not indispensable, player has reawakened Turkish fears of a rekindling of Turkish Kurdish activism. In addition, Turks became convinced that the US was bent on punishing them for rejecting the second front option despite the Bush administration’s signals to the contrary.

Turkey’s own fears and insecurities have allowed it to suspect US motives and intentions in Iraq. Almost everyone in Turkey is convinced that the US is intent on establishing an independent Kurdish state in Iraq--despite years of contrary rhetoric and assurances--either to reward the Kurds for their help in the war or as part of a grand design to remake the Middle East. It is not that Turks and Americans disagree on what they would like to see happen in Iraq. It is that they cannot agree on what ought to happen in the event conditions go awry and Iraq falls apart.

It is ironic that Turks, who have finally managed to get the European Union to open the door to accession talks after many years of trying, would feel far from confident about their future prospects. Yet for some, the EU is a poisoned chalice precisely because it proscribes changes that will force the democratization of the Turkish political space. Inevitably, this would entail the articulation of dissident voices and demands--primarily, although not exclusively, Kurdish ones--which they fear will gnaw away at the unity of the republic. Even the government, which pushed so hard with its audacious reform agenda to obtain a date from the EU, seems to have lost its elan and has stumbled on Iraq.

These fears are culminating in what can best be described as a "nationalist moment". From the extreme right as one would expect to the extreme left, there has been a rallying around symbolic issues. These have ranged from the Turkish-speaking Turkmen in Iraq who performed miserably in the January 30 elections to the mundane, such as the characterization of Turks in American television shows.

This moment will not last forever. Much of the disagreements on Iraq can be resolved amicably and with patient dialogue. The rest will be taken care of in time. If Turks are worried about how America portrays them on television, it is because they care about American attitudes. Washington, on the other hand, also knows that Turkish diplomacy may be slow and hard to influence, but in the end it has rarely failed the US.

*Henri J. Barkey, chair of the international relations department at Lehigh University, was on the US State Department’s policy planning staff (1998-2000).

7. - Al Jazeera - "Pro-EU Talat takes lead in Cyprus polls":

17 April 2005

Turkish Cypriot Premier Mehmet Ali Talat has taken a strong lead in voting for the new leader of the breakaway state, according to early results.

The voting suggests Turkish Cypriots, frustrated with decades of international isolation, have backed his pro-EU call.

With nearly three-quarters of the ballot boxes counted, Talat was taking 55% of the vote, while his main rival, Dervis Eroglu, was polling just 22%.

The voting is to replace Rauf Denktash, a hardliner who for decades has opposed efforts to unite the war-divided island. Eroglu is largely regarded as favoring Denktash's stance.

EU incentive

Talat wants to start new reunification talks with Greek Cypriots so the Turkish-occupied north will not be excluded from the benefits of the island's membership of the European Union.

"Turkish Cypriot people are voting with their free will," Talat said as he cast his ballot in the divided Cypriot capital of Nicosia. "This is for peace, for a solution of the Cyprus problem and Cyprus' entry into EU as a whole."

A total of nine candidates are competing for the president's post.

"I voted for Talat because maybe he can help bring a solution," 53-year-old Mehmet Turker said after casting his vote on Sunday.

"How long can this society continue to live like this?" Tassos Papadopoulos, the president of the internationally recognised government in the Greek Cypriot south, asked on Sunday.

"I hope the vote in the occupied region will result in a leadership that will show a sincere desire for the resumption of negotiations for the reunification of our country."

Reunification

Papadopoulos spoke before flying to the Czech Republic as part of a tour of EU capitals to rally support for changes in a UN reunification plan.

A majority of Turkish Cypriots had backed the plan in a referendum last year, but it was defeated when Greek Cypriots voted it down. Talat had supported the plan, but both Denktash and Papadopoulos had opposed it.

Turkish Cypriots' support of the plan was a major letdown for Denktash, the most prominent politician in the north of the island since the Turkish invasion of 1974, who has long demanded international recognition for his breakaway state.

On Sunday, Denktash warned the new leadership not to give up on Turkish Cypriot sovereignty.

"The person elected will take office and will have the duty of protecting the republic, its independence, and the sovereignty of its people. It is our duty to elect a person dedicated to these principles," Denktash said.

Denktash still present

Even though he is leaving active politics, Denktash, 81, still has significant support on the island and has said he plans to keep lobbying against reunification.

Talat, meanwhile, urged Papadopoulos to accept an invitation by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to restart talks to solve the Cyprus problem, the Anatolia news agency reported.

The island has been split into Turkish and Greek Cypriot sectors since the Turkish invasion, sparked by a failed coup by supporters of union with Greece.

Last year, the island joined the European Union, but EU benefits only apply to the south.

Talat's pro-EU campaign has proven popular with many Turkish Cypriots, whose income is just a fraction of Greek Cypriots' and whose economy is heavily dependent on support from Turkey.

Much support for Eroglu and others running against Talat comes from thousands of settlers from mainland Turkey who are concerned about their future on the island and uncertainty if thousands of Turkish troops there leave.

"Since the president (Denktash) did not run, I voted for one close to him," said Hasibe Gomlek, 45, originally from Osmaniye, southern Turkey. Eroglu "will protect the rights of those from Turkey," he said.

8. - AFP - "Arabs and Turkmen fear Kurdish control of Kirkuk":

KIRKUK / 17 April 2005

The northern oil city of Kirkuk, a melting pot of rival communities, reflects in miniature Iraq’s turbulent make-up -- dominated by suspicion, frustration and squabbling.

Just as politicians in Baghdad have been struggling for more than 10 weeks to form a national government, the Kurds, Arabs and local Turkman minority of Kirkuk have failed to form their own council executive.

"The situation has reached a critical point," said Tahsin Kahya, a leader of the locak Turkman minority who, with the local Arabs, fear that Kurds are out to seize control of the region.

Kahya, a former head of the Taamin province council, was reelected to the council in January but has since seen Turkman enthusiasm wilt in the continuing political bickering.

Kirkuk, the regional capital of Taamin province, around 250 kilometersmiles) north of Baghdad, is home to some 850,000 people -- Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen, a Turkish-speaking minority backed by authorities in Ankara.

"People are very frustrated, the man in the street doesn’t care about the council make-up. He just wants his representatives to get down to work and make sure water and electricity are back on tap," said Colonel Gordon Petrie of the US army.

Besides political problems, Kirkuk -- like the rest of the country -- is not immune to violence.

Last Thursday, three Iraqi policemen were killed and four people wounded when gunmen attacked a new police station in the city, while the day before 10 members of Iraq’s special oil facilities protection force were killed in a bomb attack just north of the oil-rich city.

Ethnic tensions do nothing to help calm the situation.

The local Kurdish list controls 26 seats on the council. The Turkmen have nine and the Arabs six.

The Arabs and Turkmen charge that the Kurdish vote was artificially inflated by the enfranchising of thousands of Kurdish returnees who had been expelled from the city under Saddam Hussein’s Sunni Arab-dominated regime.

The make-up of the council executive is only one of the issues dividing the communities.

Turkmen and Arabs fear the Kurds want to include Kirkuk province in the semi-autonomous area they already control in northern Iraq, an ambition openly expressed by Kurdish leaders.

The Kurds say they originally were in a majority in Kirkuk province, until Saddam brought in tens of thousands of poor Arabs in an attempt to wrest local control away from them.

A population census to determine the current ethnic make-up of the province was called off when Arabs protested at alleged moves by the Kurds to bring in new Kurdish settlers, according to Captain Kim Tschepen, an intelligence specialist.

Ethnic tension has since risen and while each of the three communities was to have received a key post in the new council, the Kurds are now only prepared to offer one post of deputy governor to both Arabs and Turkmen, according to US officers.

"The ball is in their court to decide who will take this post," said Mahmoud Mohamed Ahmad, a council member from the Kurdistan Democratic Party.

Ahmad said he deplored "the mentality of ethnic division" responsible for the deadlock on the council.

In the body’s latest session last week, all Turkmen members boycotted the session, while two Arab members made only a brief appearance.

"We want a sharing out of the top jobs, but if the Kurds insist on controlling everything, then let them do it," says a depressed Tahsin Kahya.

His opposite Arab number on the council, Sheikh Abdullah Sami al-Assi, appears just as downcast, but points out that marginalizing Arabs and Turkmen could backfire against the Kurds.

If the Kurds take full control "then if anything goes wrong they will be solely responsible," he says.