The northern Iraq factor in the 'Kurdish opening'

Foreign Minister Davutoğlu’s recent visit to Iraq, which included high-level meetings in Basra Mosul and Arbil, represented another breakthrough for Ankara in terms of its foreign policy administration. While it was important that Davutoğlu visited Basra and Mosul, it was undoubtedly his contacts in Arbil, which included a meeting with Iraqi Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani, that attracted most attention.

Davutoglu’s stopover in Arbil showed that the ice has finally broken between the Regional Kurdish Administration and Ankara. Not surprising, therefore, that agencies such as Reuters should have labeled this visit a “historic one.”

The announcement by Davutoğlu that Ankara planned to open a consulate in Arbil, on the other hand, signaled that normalization in ties with the Iraqi Kurds are in full swing at the present time. It is clear that this will be more than just a simple consulate, since it will discharge certain functions of a foreign mission in an autonomous region of Iraq.

Turkish diplomats have, for a host of pragmatic reasons, been supporting such an opening up to the Iraqi Kurds for a long time. Turkey’s present ambassador to Baghdad, Murat Özçelik – Turkey former special envoy to Iraq – had also supported this idea from the start.

The stumbling block however was that the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, was lodged in the Kandil Mountains of northern Iraq, and the perception in Turkey that members of this outlawed terrorist group were being aided and abetted by the northern Iraqi leadership.

There were times when the highest echelons of the Turkish Armed Forces would refer to the PKK and the Barzani administration in the same way, using a simple logic and maintaining that if you support the PKK you are also part of the terrorist attacks against Turkey.

One could say that the position here was not too different to the position that the United States or Israel has vis-à-vis countries such as Syria or Iran. The Turkish military was assuaged in the end when Washington decided to cooperate with it against the PKK in northern Iraq, and gave the green light for operations against the group in the Kandil Mountains.

These operations also disarmed those in Turkey who had been arguing that the United States was indirectly supporting the PKK because of its reluctance to allow such operations by the Turkish Armed Forces into northern Iraq. But eventually it also became clear to American officials that the PKK issue was not going to go away on its own, and that Turkey could only be held back up to a certain point.

It was also becoming apparent to the Iraqi Kurdish leadership that the PKK was becoming a political liability for it in terms of regional ties, most notably with Turkey, but also with Iran, which is combating a PKK off-shoot group called the PEJAK.

But the Barzani administration, considering domestic public opinion, was not prepared to go after the PKK militarily, which it felt would give an image of “Kurd fighting Kurd for the sake of an outside power.” Nevertheless it was clear that the PKK had become a handicap, as we said before.

It was of course the Erdoğan government’s “Kurdish move” that enabled the slow but steady rapprochement process between Arbil and Ankara. The realization by the Turkish military that, in the final analysis, there was no military solution to the PKK problem also enables the government to take the bold steps that it did.

Judging by press reports, the Iraqi Kurds appear extremely happy over Davutoğlu’s visit. This is understandable since one senior Kurdish official told this reporter not so long ago that “while America, Europe and all the rest are important, it is Turkey that is the most important country for the Kurdish leadership.”

There is a host of social, political, cultural and economic reasons for this assertion of course. It was clear from the outset that without normalized relations with Turkey, northern Iraq, as an autonomous entity, would in effect be landlocked. The scope of the investment by the Turkish private sector in the region, with figures running into billions of dollars, on the other hand, demonstrates the region’s economic dependency on Turkey.

But politically speaking too, we were told during a visit to Arbil some time ago, that Kurds look more to secular Turkey with its drive for modernity, than they do to the Arabs, with whom they have not had the best of relations in the past. We have also heard it said on the Turkish side that a secular northern Iraq, which moves in the direction of democracy, and has an open economy, is in Ankara’s interests.

It is perhaps because of this much awaited convergence of interests that the Iraqi Kurdish leadership watched very closely the efforts to repatriate some PKK elements in the Kandil Mountains back to Turkey recently.

However it is apparent from the statement by Kurdish officials that they too were deeply disturbed by the way Turkey’s pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party, or DTP, and the PKK itself, turned the fact that militants from this group gave themselves up at the Habur border post into some kind of a victory parade.

That grated on Turkish nerves, and stalled the Kurdish move for the moment, forcing the government to put the issue on the back burner for a while. The Iraqi Kurdish leadership did not like this outcome and cautioned both the DTP and the PKK to be less provocative at a highly sensitive moment.

The Erdoğan government has nevertheless said that the repatriation of PKK militants will continue sometime in the near future, presumable after the bad feelings created as a result of the first arrivals is dissipated. More importantly for the Iraqi Kurdish leadership, though, was the Davutoğlu visit, which also signaled that the Erdoğan government would not be turning its back on the Kurdish move.

It is clear at this stage that unless the PKK steps in to stymie the current process, or the DTP mismanages the whole matter at a very delicate moment, Turkey has no choice but to go through with this process, which is painful for ordinary citizens given all the people killed by this group, including of course a high number of conscripts.

This is where the onus returns to the Iraqi Kurdish leadership, which has to use all its influence over the DTP and the PKK to keep them on track as far as this process is concerned, but without going in for provocative displays. One can say therefore that we are still at the “work in progress” stage as far as this process is concerned.

It is clear that unless the Kurdish side shows the same kind of courage the Erdoğan government is showing vis-à-vis the Kurdish issue – in the face of massive opposition in Turkey – this process of rapprochement will be negatively affected. That in turn runs the risk of returning the ties between Ankara and Arbil to the “bad old days,” which obviously will be to no ones interest, let alone the Iraqi Kurds.