Further to this interview with the president of Iraqi Kurdistan, Masoud Barzani, here’s some more on the growing tension between Turkey and the Iraqi Kurds:
Iraq’s already-fragile northern oil sector could be the victim – along with Iraqis and Turks – if Ankara gives the green light for troops to invade northern Iraq on the hunt for the Kurdistan Workers Party.
The PKK – the party’s Turkish acronym – is considered a terrorist organization by the US. It is accused of slipping into Turkey from bases in Iraq’s Qandil Mountains to plant mines and detonate bombs. Sixteen PKK fighters were killed in the Kurdish area of Turkey Sunday and Monday by Turkish soldiers.
Turkey has threatened to invade Iraq before – and did numerous times in the decades before the 2003 invasion – to chase the PKK. (It also issued such threats if Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region declared independence.)
But exchanges over the past two weeks between Turkish military officials and politicians and Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) leaders have escalated, including threats Iraqi Kurds would interfere in Kurdish Turkey if Turkey interfered in the politics surrounding Kirkuk.
Kirkuk is officially outside the KRG area. Historically, Kurds were the majority with Turkmen, Christian, and Arab inhabitants. Most Kurds were forced out by Saddam Hussein. The KRG is demanding the referendum outlined in the 2005 constitution be held by the end of this year to decide whether Kirkuk, with its large amounts of oil reserves, is annexed. Turkey, Iran, and Syria fear this will embolden independence-minded Kurds in their countries.
The top Turkish general said he favors military action in northern Iraq, though he added it was a political decision to be made…
Most of Iraq’s 2 million barrels a day of production are pumped from oilfields in the south, though more than a third of Iraq’s 115 billion barrels of proven reserves are located in the north. Iraq’s entire oil infrastructure needs major investment to update its aging system to produce at full capacity. And while violence in most of the country prevents such investment – as does the lack of a hydrocarbons law governing the oil resources, including possible foreign investment – the KRG is ready…
All of Iraq’s oil exports – from which Iraq funds 93 percent of its federal budget – are shipped from the port of Basra in the south. A pipeline from Kirkuk to Ceyhan, Turkey, is attacked so often when it dips into Sunni areas it is considered inoperable. (Royal Dutch Shell, in partnership with the state-owned Turkish Petroleum Corp., wants to build another more direct pipeline.)…
The Turkish army is reportedly massing on the border and making special forces moves into Iraq, according to The Jamestown Foundation. …[T]he US, European Union, Arab states, and Iraq would all oppose an incursion, though, which Ankara must weigh heavily.
Mick Hartley 
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