Reprinted with the permission of Red Pepper. Originally published online in the October 2002 issue. Red Pepper can be contacted at Red Pepper, 1b Waterlow Road, London N19 5NJ, United Kingdom. Tel +44 (0) 20 7281 7024. Fax: +44 (0) 20 7263 9345. E-mail: redpepper@redpepper.org.uk. Website: www.redpepper.org.uk"
As military planners in Washington and London pore over invasion maps of Iraq, the rush to control the country's lucrative northern oilfields is already underway. The resources-rich Kirkuk and Mosul region straddles the northern no-fly zone (where an autonomous Kurdish administration operates) and a zone to the south under Baghdad's direct control. An estimated three million Kurds live uneasily alongside tens of thousands of ethnic Arabs and Turkmens, the latter of whom have strong cultural and linguistic ties with their Turkish neighbours to the north.
At the end of August, Turkish defense minister Sabahattin Cakmakoglu made a thinly veiled threat to annex Kirkuk and Mosul, regions under Ottoman control until 1918, by referring to the areas as "historic Turkish lands" under Ankara's "direct safekeeping".
The Kurds, Turkmens, Ankara and Washington have one common interest: Kirkuk oil. The "great game" for Kirkuk stretches back to 1918, when the oil-hungry British seized the region from the defeated Ottoman empire. Since then, Turkey has periodically raised the issue of its lost territories. Oil analysts estimate the present Iraq-Turkey pipeline could yield eight times its current output if sanctions were lifted. Total reserves in the Kirkuk field are worth an estimated $10 billion.
"Freeing up these reserves would benefit Turkey, which has no oil of its own," says independent political analyst Mohammed Noureddine, "and Washington, which needs its NATO ally to transport the oil safely to western markets."
On September 6, the deputy speaker of the Turkish Parliament, Murat Sokmenoglu, called for an autonomous Turkmen region comprising Kirkuk and Mosul. He reasoned that the Turkmens' linguistic and ethnic ties to Turkey would make them an ideal buffer against wayward Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani, who has caused nightmares in Ankara by demanding an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq.
And on September 9, Turkish Foreign Minister Sukru Sina Gurel ominously remarked: "Turkey will do whatever is necessary in line with its national interests and security needs," a thinly disguised threat to annex Kirkuk should Barzani get his way.
Small wonder, then, that Washington and Ankara reportedly clinched a deal in January 2001 to establish a Turkmen Republic in northern Iraq if the US decided to force Saddam out. According to the Kurdish newspaper Ozgur Politika, the republic would kill two birds with one stone by blocking an incipient Kurdish state and securing US-Turkish control over the Kirkuk and Mosul oilfields.
To give the Turkmens an early stake in Iraq's future, Turkey pressured the Kurdish National Congress in early 2001 to accept the Turkmen Union Party into its coalition of anti-Saddam forces, according to Ozgur Politika.
Apart from its common strategic interests with Ankara, the Bush administration has thick oil ties of its own to northern Iraq. As CEO of oil giant Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney oversaw the sale of more than $73 million in spare parts and equipment to Iraq through French and Russian subsidiaries from early 1997 to the summer of 2000, according to UN records. Much of the equipment was used to refurbish the creaking Iraq-Turkey pipeline.
Thus, it's no surprise that Cheney has long advocated an end to unilateral US sanctions on Baghdad. According to a Washington Post report in June 2001, Halliburton subsidiaries Dresser-Rand and Ingersoll Dresser Pump traded with Iraq for a year under Cheney -- signing some $30 million in contracts -- before he sold them in February 2000.
Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmad Chalabi has predicted that, if Saddam is ousted, US oil heavyweights such as Halliburton, ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco will have a "big shot at Iraqi oil". But first Turkey will have to clear the shooting range by securing control over Kirkuk -- and all the options are fraught with dangers.
According to Noureddine, the reclaiming of former Turkish lands would open up a Pandora's box of suppressed territorial disputes with neighboring Syria, Armenia and Greece, potentially destabilising the whole Middle East.
Moreover, Syrian Kurds live close enough to sabotage the Iraq-Turkey pipeline if Ankara got heavy-handed with their brethren in northern Iraq, Nouredinne warns.
Playing the Turkmen card is problematic too. So far, the six major Turkmen factions have co-operated uneasily, but a higher profile after Saddam could sharpen existing rivalries and undermine the unity Ankara and Washington are banking on.
Turkmen emnity toward the Iraqi Kurds also goes back a long way. In July 1959, Kurdish communists massacred most of Kirkuk City's Turkmens. Since 1991, the Turkmen Front has set up its own militia units -- allegedly financed by Turkish intelligence-- which ignore the Kurdish administration.
Clearly, the Turkmen-Kurdish trust needed to keep the oil flowing is in short supply. Ultimately, northern Iraq's ethnic groups may be unwilling to give up the relative freedom of the no-fly zones to become pawns in the regional chess game masterminded by Washington and Ankara. "Sooner or later," warns Kani Xulan, director of the American Kurdish Information Network, "Turkey will have to say goodbye to Iraq." If he's right, it could also be a rueful goodbye from Dick Cheney, and from the oil giants now salivating at their prospects once Saddam has gone.