Talabani still waiting for an invitation
The Istanbul meeting of the neighbors of Iraq might have provided an opportunity for a Turkish-Iraqi summit on security cooperation. However, Talabani is not invited and is not coming.
Despite all the remarks by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, including the one that “Fatma may go on holiday” – an allusion to the “Ayşe may go on holiday” message late legendary Foreign Minister Turan Güneş sent to Ankara from last ditch London talks and gave the go-ahead for the 1974 Cyprus operation – from the men in the street to the retired generals accused by the premier of engaging in “agitation” everyone is aware that the Turkish government continues to consider a Turkish military incursion into northern Iraq as the “last option” in the fight against the separatist terrorist gang.
As is apparent from the government’s decision to withhold a decision on the issue first by 72 hours and later for another few days at the request of U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and later until after a Nov. 5 meeting at the White House between President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Erdoğan, Turkey is trying to give diplomacy one last chance before resorting to use of force to bring an end to the presence of the separatist terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) gang in northern Iraq.
Not only are the members of the PKK enjoying a safe haven in the mountains of northern Iraq, but they are freely moving around the territory, getting medical treatment at hospitals, opening “cultural” bureaus and even some chieftains of the gang are serving as peshmerga commanders in Barzani’s regional force.
Turkey is of course right in expecting the U.S. to do something on this issue as it is the “occupation power” in Iraq and because of its military presence in that country it is responsible for peace and security in that country together with the puppet Jalal Talabani regime it installed and the new Iraqi armed forces it established, trained and armed.
It is a fact as well that although the U.S. has withdrawn from the northern parts of Iraq and left the security of that region to the Kurdish peshmerga of the local Kurdish administration led by Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) leader Massoud Barzani, the region remains under strict surveillance of the U.S…. Washington knew far better than anyone the dimensions of the problem Turkey has been facing, yet did nothing over the past period other than stalling the Turks with the so-called trilateral (Turkey-Iraq and the U.S.) “coordinators” mechanism.
Cooperation with Barzani
If Turkey, despite all the rhetoric, did not want a military operation and wanted the PKK presence in Iraq problem to be resolved through diplomacy, cooperation of the local warlord Barzani – as well as the U.S. and the central Iraqi government – is a must. However, all indications so far demonstrate the fact that Barzani has no intention of cooperating with Turkey – unlike what had happened in the previous such Turkish operations – and on the contrary is in attempts to use a possible Turkish intervention as a tool in his Kurdish nation-building campaign, which is not limited to northern Iraq.
What is obvious as well is the role Washington and Jalal Talabani, a Kurd and leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), could play in not only convincing Barzani to cooperate with Turkey but also in pressuring the PKK to stop violence if not to lay down arms totally.
Thus, while the meeting of Erdoğan with President Bush on Nov. 5 will be of crucial importance either for a “diplomatic way out” from the present quagmire we have been facing or a “coordinated” Turkey-U.S. drive against the PKK, Turkey cannot and should not overlook the crucial role Talabani – who has a reputation as “belly dancer of politics” – might have to play in contributing to a Turkish or Turkish-U.S. joint drive against the PKK and his capability of pulling Barzani into such a scheme.
Over the past years the doors of Ankara were closed to Talabani because of the sensitivities of former President Ahmet Necdet Sezer. We no longer have such a restriction. However, Ankara’s doors remain closed to Talabani. Even if meeting with Talabani might not be a success, if diplomacy is given a last chance Turkey must at least try to utilize the Iraq’s neighbors meeting in Istanbul this week, invite Talabani there and have talks with the Iraqi president on the sidelines of that conference.
Sabah Omran, Iraq’s ambassador to Ankara told us yesterday “up to this minute we have not received any invitation from Turkey for a visit to Ankara or Istanbul either for a working or official visit or for the foreign ministers’ meeting.”
We should not have missed out on such an opportunity.