27 January 2005

1. "Kurds and the Kurdistans", the Kurds and Kurdistan – a nation and a state? Western line of thinking leads us to the idea of nation-state, but can it be suited to the reality of Middle East? What is a nation? Does every nation need a state on their own? Does one Kurdistan exist, or are there several of them?

2. "PKK claims responsibility for warehouse fire near Istanbul", the outlawed Kurdish Workers' Party(PKK) has claimed that its militants were responsible for a fire that gutted a warehouse belonging to electronics manufacturer Bekooutside of Istanbul, the private NTV reported on Wednesday.

3. "Turkey Warns Kurds About Kirkuk Control", Turkey's military warned Wednesday that the migration of large numbers of Kurds into the oil rich Iraqi city of Kirkuk could sway the results of the upcoming elections and possibly lead to clashes that could draw Ankara into the dispute.

4. "Kurdish parties eye independence", the reason that Kurds have made a united list is "because they think the most important thing is to be united and to ask and to struggle for independence," he added.

5. "Iraq: Kurdish Voters Want To Preserve Self-Rule", as Iraq's 30 January elections for a new National Assembly approach, Kurdish voters are expected to turn out in large numbers to support their own united list of candidates. The Kurdish list is campaigning to preserve the Iraqi Kurds' already considerable degree of autonomy, which many credit with keeping their area quiet, despite conflicts elsewhere in the country.

6. "Thousands of Turkmen sent to Iraq by Turkey", according to the Mezopotamya Radio, thousands of Turkmens have been sent to Iraq by the Turkish authorities, aiming to give the pro-Turkish Turkmen Front a better position in the Iraqi elections.


1. - The Global Politican - "Kurds and the Kurdistans":

23 January 2005 / by Antero Leitzinger

Western thinking leads us to figure out nations on the basis of a common language or religion. According to the principle of nation-state, each nation must have a homeland. But are the Kurds one united nation, or rather a heterogeneous group of various nations in the same way as, for instance, the Scandinavians [Swedes, Danes, Norwegians, Icelanders] or the Baltic Finns [Finns, Estonians, Karelians, Ingrians, Veps, Livonians]?

The Kurds speak several languages and confess even more religions. Equally big differences prevail between Kurdish languages as between them and Persian. If Gurani and Luri are just dialects of one and same language, then are not also Sorani and Kurmandji dialects of Persian? If the Kurds still need a state separate from other Iranic nations, would there next be a liberation movement of Zazakistan within independent Kurdistan?

There are several Kurdistans, "lands of the Kurds", in the world – not only because the traditional territory inhabited by Kurds is divided between at least six states, but also because each Kurdish party has their own idea of the borders, governance and future of their ideal state. The Kurds have dozens of nationalist parties, and besides, many Kurds support cross-country parties that exceed ethnic boundaries in those countries where free party activity is legal at all.

In Iran, there is a province called Kordestan, rooted in medieval times, but the Kurdish state that declared independence in 1946 was not located in Kordestan, but in the province of Western Azerbaijan. In Iraq, the Kurdish region is divided into three parts: the stripe governed by the Baath party, and the territories of the competitor Kurd parties KDP and PUK. The "Red Kurdistan" that officially belongs to Azerbaijan, is presently ruled by Armenia. Part of Syria’s Kurds have lacked citizenship and civil rights for four decades already. In Turkey, the position of Kurds is better than in any of her neighbouring countries, but still it is the Turkish Kurds, whose human rights are usually covered by international media.

Whose Kurdistan is the right one? The Iraqi Kurds are under the protection of the NATO, but the PKK considers NATO their enemy. Founding a national state in the Middle East has its model in Israel, but the idea was once agitated by the Soviet Union. The Kurdish national identity is often shaped among the immigrants in Europe, and under the influence of controversal political programmes. The problem touches Europe, but is it necessarily a problem?

KURDS AND THE KURDISTANS

The Kurds and Kurdistan – a nation and a state? Western line of thinking leads us to the idea of nation-state, but can it be suited to the reality of Middle East? What is a nation? Does every nation need a state on their own? Does one Kurdistan exist, or are there several of them?

Click here if you want to read the full article: http://globalpolitician.com/articles.asp?ID=316


2. - Xinhuanet - "PKK claims responsibility for warehouse fire near Istanbul":

ANKARA / 26 January 2005

The outlawed Kurdish Workers' Party(PKK) has claimed that its militants were responsible for a fire that gutted a warehouse belonging to electronics manufacturer Bekooutside of Istanbul, the private NTV reported on Wednesday.

In a statement issued late Tuesday by the PKK said that it had set fire on Monday, causing more than 5 million US dollars in damage at Beko's Beylikduzu storage facility, according to the report.

Up to 35,000 electronics products, at least half of them TV sets, were destroyed in the blaze, according to a Beko spokesperson.

The PKK statement said that the group would be stepping up attacks against targets in cities and built up areas if the Turkish armed forces did not cease the latest campaign to root out Kurdish rebels.

The PKK launched an armed campaign against the Turkish government in 1984.

Fighting subdued significantly in 1999 when Turkey captured PKK commander Abdullah Ocalan, but the group called off its unilateralceasefire in 2004, threatening to wreck the fragile peace.


3. - AP - "Turkey Warns Kurds About Kirkuk Control":

ANKARA / 26 January 2005 / by Selcan Hacaoglu

Turkey's military warned Wednesday that the migration of large numbers of Kurds into the oil rich Iraqi city of Kirkuk could sway the results of the upcoming elections and possibly lead to clashes that could draw Ankara into the dispute.

Kirkuk, a multiethnic city with a Kurdish, ethnic Turkish populations, Arab, Christian - but Kurds have been the strongest group in the city since the fall of Saddam Hussein. Kirkuk is also home to 12 percent of Iraq's oil reserves, and Turkey said the resources must be shared equally by all Iraqis.

Turkey has repeatedly warned that Kurdish control of the city would make an independent Kurdish state more viable, a development that Ankara has repeatedly said it won't accept. Turkey fears that a strong Kurdish entity in northern Iraq could inspire Kurds in Turkey, where Kurdish rebels have battled the Turkish army since 1984.

"Hundreds of thousands of Kurds migrated to Kirkuk and registered to vote," Gen. Ilker Basbug, deputy head of the Turkish military, said at a news conference. "This could make the results of the elections questionable."

"Even worse," he added, "these developments could threaten the territorial and political unity of Iraq. We're worried that such a development would pose an important security problem for Turkey."

Basbug stressed that a dispute of election results could lead to clashes. Sunni Arab and ethnic Turkish parties are still deciding whether to contest the Jan. 30 balloting in Kirkuk.

"This could lead to an independent Kurdish state," Basbug said. "There could be clashes, these clashes could trigger an internal war in Iraq."

Basbug said that according to the Iraqi Trade Ministry, some 350,000 Kurds have moved to Kirkuk, but he added that the figure could not be confirmed.

A U.S. military officer in northern Iraq, Col. Lloyd Miles, said that some 30,000 displaced people - the vast majority of them Kurdish - have returned to the province. Many Kurds were forced to leave their homes under the rule of Saddam Hussein.


4. - IPS - "Kurdish parties eye independence":

ARBIL / 26 January 2005 / by Aaron Glantz

Ahmed Khani sips his tea as he reclines in a high-back leather chair, a sepia-toned portrait of the father of Iraqi Kurdish nationalism, the late Mullah Mustafa Barzani behind him.

In the portrait, Barzani wears military fatigues and the traditional Kurdish headscarf. Khani is wearing a suit.

Ahmed Khani is the deputy local chief of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), which Mullah Mustafa Barzani founded a half-century ago. Now, the organisation is run by his son Masoud and controls the western half of the Kurdish autonomous area -- from the steep mountains along the Turkish border to the provincial capital Arbil in the plains.

The eastern half of Kurdish Iraq is controlled by the Barzanis -- old rival Jalal Talabani and his Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).

For this weekend election, Kani says the two parties have buried their differences and are running on a Kurdish unity ticket. And he is confident of victory.

"We expect to win 99 percent of the vote in the Kurdistan Parliament," he told IPS. "Perhaps 98 percent."

Kani can be sure of a commanding victory because nearly every political force in Kurdistan has joined his coalition. Not only are the PUK and KDP together, but Kurdish parties representing Islamists, Communists, Christians, and ethnic Turks as well.

Each party’s representation in the Kurdish Parliament has been negotiated in advance: the PUK and KDP will get 41 seats each, the Communists 10, the Kurdistan Islamic Union nine, the Turkomen four.

"This is not like Saddam’s election when 99.999 percent voted for Saddam and only he didn’t vote for himself, so he could say that it’s fair," the KDP official said. "It’s not like that. People are supporting us. People are voting for us."

The different political parties have their own supporters and they are divided, he acknowledged. "But when all the parties are together of course they will get 99 percent of the vote."

That is not by itself a good thing, says Dler Mohammed Sheriff, a Communist Party candidate and a lawyer. "But democracy hasn’t really taken root in Iraq yet," he said. "We should be arguing on the basis of ideology, but right now we think the case of Kurds is in a threatened position. That’s why we have decided to be on the same slate as the Kurdish parties."

Underlining this perceived need for national unity is the difficult history of the Kurdistan autonomous region. After allegations of massive fraud in the first Kurdish parliamentary election in 1992, the two main parties agreed to share power equally, with both taking 50 seats each in the 111-member assembly (the other seats were reserved for ethnic and religious minorities).

But the arrangement did not keep the peace for long. In 1994 a war erupted between the PUK and KDP, with both sides seeking to increase control over the Kurdistan region. The war was brutal, and both sides called on outside forces for help.

"It’s absolutely against democracy," university professor and human rights activist Farhad Pirball says of the unified election slate. "But this is a very important election for the future of Kurds. Kurds have different ideas and ideologies, but when we discuss the election, the more important thing is independence."

The reason that Kurds have made a united list is "because they think the most important thing is to be united and to ask and to struggle for independence," he added.


5. - Radio Free Europe - "Iraq: Kurdish Voters Want To Preserve Self-Rule":

As Iraq's 30 January elections for a new National Assembly approach, Kurdish voters are expected to turn out in large numbers to support their own united list of candidates. The Kurdish list is campaigning to preserve the Iraqi Kurds' already considerable degree of autonomy, which many credit with keeping their area quiet, despite conflicts elsewhere in the country.

PRAGUE / 26 January 2005 / by Charles Recknagel

Kurdish parties in northern Iraq are expecting a large turnout for the 30 January vote as they take advantage of generally good security in the region to campaign actively.

Kamran al-Karadaghi, a regional expert with the London-based Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR), is in the northeastern town of Al-Sulaymaniyah. He told RFE/RL that the Kurdish parties are urging voters to go the polls to maintain their substantial degree of self-rule within a future federal Iraq.

"You can feel that electioneering is really [going on] all over. I mean, the leaders are traveling in Kurdish towns. They talk to people. They issue statements. Their newspapers, their press, is full of election news. They are telling the voters that it is important to vote so that they will be able to protect their concept of a federation in Iraq, which is Iraqi Kurdistan.," al-Karadaghi said.

The Kurds are pressing hard for defining Iraq as a federal system when Iraq's first post-Saddam Hussein constitution is written later this year. The writing of the constitution is to be overseen by the new National Assembly, which will also choose Iraq's next interim government.

One prominent Kurdish politician, interim Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar al-Zebari, expressed the Kurds' election goals this way in a speech today in Irbil: "The aim is that Kurds, the Kurdish people, have a good presence and be fairly represented in these elections and in the new National Assembly and have weight in this assembly." Three car bombs killed at least seven people in Kirkuk today in a sign of continuing tensions in the city.

Al-Karadaghi said the Kurdish leaders also want a strong representation in the National Assembly to ensure the Kurdish-administered area receives -- and has spending control over -- what they consider a fair share of Iraq's future state revenues. "It's not only [about] the political side and the integrity of Kurdistan, but also the share of the Iraqi budget which they will get for the Kurdistan federation," he said. "That's also an important issue."

The Kurdish-administered area of northern Iraq has been self-governing since it fell out of Saddam Hussein's control after the 1991 Gulf War. The area is now under a joint administration created by the two largest Kurdish factions -- the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) -- after almost a decade of fighting that split the territory between them.

For the National Assembly race, the two parties are running a united candidate list called the Kurdish Unity list.

Al-Karadaghi said Kurdish turnout for the vote could be boosted by the fact that the Kurdish-administered region is also holding two additional polls on 30 January. These are for the Kurdish parliament and for local councils. He said the council races have particularly motivated voters because those contests feature the KDP and PUK running against each other, as well as numerous smaller parties.

The most volatile local contest is in the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, a town with a mixed population that is outside the Kurdish-administered area. There, the recent return of some 100,000 Kurdish residents of voting age who were displaced under Hussein looks set to give the Kurds dominance of the provincial council, despite alarm within the city's other communities.

These other communities include large numbers of Arabs transplanted to Kirkuk under Hussein's programs to "Arabize" oil-rich areas of northern Iraq during his conflicts with Kurdish leaders. They also include Turkic-speaking Turkoman residents of Kirkuk and a small number of Christians.

Al-Karadaghi said a decision by Iraq's Independent Election Commission allowing the returning Kurds to vote appears to have set the stage for the Kurds to take control of the currently balanced Kirkuk council. Their chances have been boosted by a decision by one Arab party, the United Arab Front, to boycott the poll in protest against the election commission's decision.

"If the Arabs boycott, of course, then the Kurds think that with the latest arrangements for the Kurdish deportees to participate, they might have a majority in the council. The Turkomans are also not happy because of this, and I think the Turkomans would have preferred the Arabs not to boycott. But, in any case, it is one Arab party [that has boycotted]. I think there are other Arab groups that will participate," al-Karadaghi said.

One of the major Turkoman parties, the Turkoman Front, is also reported now to be considering withdrawing from the election.

Three car bombs killed at least seven people in Kirkuk today in a sign of continuing tensions in the city.

Kurdish leaders want to include Kirkuk in the Kurdish-administered area of northern Iraq when the final constitution is written. That goal has alarmed some leaders of Iraq's other communities. Mahir Nakip is a native of Kirkuk and the former president of a group called the Iraqi Turks Culture and Benevolence Association. He told a conference on the Turkomans held at New York's Columbia University in November that he sees the dispute in Kirkuk as a fight over oil.

"Kurdish people are claiming that Kirkuk is a city in Kurdistan. There is not any evidence to show this reality. They are fighting for oil, not for the city. They are insisting on Kirkuk because they have been trying to occupy Kirkuk since the 1950s. We are sure that they will not declare their Kurdish state until Kirkuk is included in this area," Nakip said.

Kurdish officials say they are committed to Iraq's territorial integrity and deny they are seeking to create an independent state.

The events in northern Iraq are being closely watched by neighboring Turkey. Ankara accuses the Kurds of disregarding the rights of the Turkoman minority in areas they control and opposes any measures that would give the Kurds greater political or financial independence. Turkey is widely believed to fear that greater autonomy for the Iraqi Kurds could also encourage its own large Kurdish minority in the south to seek similar rights.

Ankara recently suppressed a 15-year rebellion by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) over autonomy demands. The conflict, which killed or displaced tens of thousands of people, ended with the arrest of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan in 1999.

Al-Karadaghi said tensions in Iraq over whether Kirkuk is included in the Kurdish-administered area could subside if parties in the new National Assembly can agree on a formula for sharing the state budget. He said the Kurdish administration could stand to get more money by sharing the federal budget -- which includes oil revenues from Iraq's main oil fields in the south -- than it could hope to get from Kirkuk's revenues alone.


6. - Kurdish Media - "Thousands of Turkmen sent to Iraq by Turkey":

LONDON / 26 January 2005

According to the Mezopotamya Radio, thousands of Turkmens have been sent to Iraq by the Turkish authorities, aiming to give the pro-Turkish Turkmen Front a better position in the Iraqi elections.

The Radio on Wednesday interviewed several coach drivers who confirmed that they have been involved in transporting Turkmens from Turkey to South Kurdistan via the Xabur border.

KurdishMedia.com could not verify the report.