20.02.2007

The Turkish policy community is up in arms debating fiercely over what to do in Iraq. What should be our policy on Kirkuk and why have we spent so much time being fixated on the Kurds alone?

Whatever the details of such a discourse, the key issue for Ankara today remains how Turkey will arrange its relationship with Iraq’s Kurds. Needless to say, both the issue of Kirkuk as well as the future status of the Kurdish entity in the north are of utmost importance. It is within this framework that the “Grand Bargain” theory has become the primary source of attention. What would a “Grand Bargain” between Turks and Iraqi Kurds entail?

Let me underline that the intellectual copyrights of this theory belong to Henri Barkey of Lehigh University, although Richard Holbrooke has brought it to international attention with a recent op-ed in the Washington Post. In any case, my understanding of such a “Grand Bargain” is as follows:

1. Turkey and the Iraqi Kurds would agree to have a cordial, interdependent relationship which would recognize the Kurdish entity’s crucial links with Turkey.

2. Turkey would be a critical component in Iraqi Kurds’ outreach to the world, i.e. trade, energy and transportation links whereas the Kurdish entity would constitute a strategic bulwark against instability from Sunnistan and Shiistan (again copyrights Barkey). In other words, Northern Iraq would make up a “cordon sanitaire” for Turkey and would shield it from potential instability further south.

3. The Kurdish entity would see to it that the menace that is the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) is dealt with and is removed from Northern Iraq. The PKK would thus cease to be an issue between Iraqi Kurds and Turkey.

4. Kirkuk would be part of the Kurdish entity (ideally a component of a federal Iraq), but it would not be the capital of the Kurdish region. The Turkomans would be accorded special minority rights that would allow them to prosper and have protected quotas in the local governance of that city.

5. The oil and gas resources’ revenues of the Kirkuk region would be distributed equally between all Iraqis and Turkomans would be guaranteed a certain percentage of these revenues.

6. The Iraqi Kurds would play a constructive role vis-à-vis Turkey’s Kurds and would help Turkey consolidate its peace with its Kurdish citizens.

7. A prosperous Kurdish entity in Northern Iraq would help the development and growth of the Turkey’s Southeastern economy as oil, gas, trade and transport links would flourish.

These are the rough contours of what I understand of the “Grand Bargain” which is being discussed widely these days. Discussing the “Grand Bargain” should not necessarily mean that Iraq will eventually break into pieces and all hell will break loose. On the contrary, all of the seven parameters of the “Grand Bargain” can be implemented with a federal component of Iraq. Needless to say, we in Ankara prefer Iraq to remain as a state which would function along federal lines.

It appears that the civilian component of our foreign policy bureaucracy seems to appreciate the new situation increasingly better, while the security establishment still has a harder time coming to terms with the contours of such a bargain. The key issue of course, for the security establishment, is the bitter past of PKK violence. Should the Iraqi Kurds signal their willingness to jointly manage the removal and preferable liquidation of the PKK, we would have an environment more conducive to bargaining.Is it not ironic that former President Turgut Özal foresaw all of this more than a decade ago when most of us did not know where Kirkuk was on the map?