21 February 2005

1. "The sick man of Europe - again", Islamism and leftism add up to anti-American madness in Turkey.

2. "Another charge filed against writer Orhan Pamuk", the Turkish famous writer Orhan Pamuk allegedly says, ‘30,000 Kurds and 1 million Armenians had been killed in Turkey,’ a statement argued to constitute a crime according to the Turkish Penal Code.

3. "Turks Irked By EU Recommendations", Erdogan said the government would look into the recommendations.

4. "Divided Cyprus defies years of peace efforts Document Actions", Nicosia remains the last divided capital of the European Union, with reunification efforts stalled since the failure last year of a UN settlement plan, and is a major stumbling block to Turkey's aspirations to join the European bloc.

5. "EU welcomes Turkish Cypriot vote results", the European Union has welcomed the victory of the pro-EU governing party in parliamentary elections in breakaway northern Cyprus, saying the vote showed Turkish Cypriots are determined to integrate into the EU. With 98 per cent of the ballot boxes counted, the Republican Turkish Party had 44 per cent of the vote, while the National Unity Party, which opposes a UN plan for reunifying the island, had around 32 per cent, electoral officials said.

6. "Iraqi Kurds Detail Demands for a Degree of Autonomy", since the fall of Saddam Hussein, the Kurds have made known their determination to retain a degree of autonomy in the territory they have dominated for more than a decade. Now, after their strong performance in the elections last month, Kurdish leaders are for the first time spelling out specific demands.

7. "A golden chance for the Kurds", victims of Iraq history must play cards carefully.

8. "Depicting Kurds' Misery With Tough Lyricism", 'Turtles Can Fly' is the third feature film that Bahman Ghobadi, a Kurdish director from Iran, has made about the suffering and resilience of his people, who have the bad luck to live spread across the often volatile borders of several nation-states, including Turkey and Iraq.

1. - The Wall Street Journal - "The sick man of Europe - again":

Islamism and leftism add up to anti-American madness in Turkey

ANKARA / 16 February 2005 / by Robert L. Pollock*

Several years ago I attended an exhibition in Istanbul. The theme was local art from the era of the country’s last military coup (1980). But the artists seemed a lot more concerned with the injustices of global capitalism than the fate of Turkish democracy. In fact, to call the works leftist caricatures--many featured fat capitalists with Uncle Sam hats and emaciated workers--would have been an understatement. As one astute local reviewer put it (I quote from memory): "This shows that Turkish artists were willing to abase themselves voluntarily in ways that Soviet artists refused even at the height of Stalin’s oppression."

That exhibition came to mind amid all the recent gnashing of teeth in the U.S. over the question of "Who lost Turkey?" Because it shows that a 50-year special relationship, between longtime NATO allies who fought Soviet expansionism together starting in Korea, has long had to weather the ideological hostility and intellectual decadence of much of Istanbul’s elite. And at the 2002 election, the increasingly corrupt mainstream parties that had championed Turkish-American ties self-destructed, leaving a vacuum that was filled by the subtle yet insidious Islamism of the Justice and Development (AK) Party. It’s this combination of old leftism and new Islamism--much more than any mutual pique over Turkey’s refusal to side with us in the Iraq war--that explains the collapse in relations.

And what a collapse it has been. On a brief visit to Ankara earlier this month with Undersecretary of Defense Doug Feith, I found a poisonous atmosphere--one in which just about every politician and media outlet (secular and religious) preaches an extreme combination of America- and Jew-hatred that (like the Turkish artists) voluntarily goes far further than anything found in most of the Arab world’s state-controlled press. If I hesitate to call it Nazi-like, that’s only because Goebbels would probably have rejected much of it as too crude.

Consider the Islamist newspaper Yeni Safak, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s favorite. A Jan. 9 story claimed that U.S. forces were tossing so many Iraqi bodies into the Euphrates that mullahs there had issued a fatwa prohibiting residents from eating its fish. Yeni Safak has also repeatedly claimed that U.S. forces used chemical weapons in Fallujah. One of its columnists has alleged that U.S. soldiers raped women and children there and left their bodies in the streets to be eaten by dogs. Among the paper’s "scoops" have been the 1,000 Israeli soldiers deployed alongside U.S. forces in Iraq, and that U.S. forces have been harvesting the innards of dead Iraqis for sale on the U.S. "organ market."

It’s not much better in the secular press. The mainstream Hurriyet has accused Israeli hit squads of assassinating Turkish security personnel in Mosul, and the U.S. of starting an occupation of Indonesia under the guise of humanitarian assistance. At Sabah, a columnist last fall accused the U.S. ambassador to Turkey, Eric Edelman, of letting his "ethnic origins"--guess what, he’s Jewish--determine his behavior. Mr. Edelman is indeed the all-too-rare foreign-service officer who takes seriously his obligation to defend America’s image and interests abroad. The intellectual climate in which he’s operating has gone so mad that he actually felt compelled to organize a conference call with scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey to explain that secret U.S. nuclear testing did not cause the recent tsunami.

Never in an ostensibly friendly country have I had the impression of embassy staff so besieged. Mr. Erdogan’s office recently forbade Turkish officials from attending a reception at the ambassador’s residence in honor of the "Ecumenical" Patriarch of the Orthodox Church, who resides in Istanbul. Why? Because "ecumenical" means universal, which somehow makes it all part of a plot to carve up Turkey.

Perhaps the most bizarre anti-American story au courant in the Turkish capital is the "eighth planet" theory, which holds not only that the U.S. knows of an impending asteroid strike, but that we know it’s going to hit North America. Hence our desire to colonize the Middle East.

It all sounds loony, I know. But such stories are told in all seriousness at the most powerful dinner tables in Ankara. The common thread is that almost everything the U.S. is doing in the world--even tsunami relief--has malevolent motivations, usually with the implication that we’re acting as muscle for the Jews.

In the face of such slanders Turkish politicians have been utterly silent. In fact, Turkish parliamentarians themselves have accused the U.S. of "genocide" in Iraq, while Mr. Erdogan (who we once hoped would set for the Muslim world an example of democracy) was among the few world leaders to question the legitimacy of the Iraqi elections. When confronted, Turkish pols claim they can’t risk going against "public opinion."

All of which makes Mr. Erdogan a prize hypocrite for protesting to Condoleezza Rice the unflattering portrayal of Turkey in an episode of the fictional TV show "The West Wing." The episode allegedly depicts Turkey as having been taking over by a retrograde populist government that threatens women’s rights. (Sounds about right to me.)

In the old days, Turkey would have had an opposition party strong enough to bring such a government closer to sanity. But the only opposition now is a moribund People’s Republican Party, or CHP, once the party of Ataturk. At a recent party congress, its leader accused his main challenger of having been part of a CIA plot against him. That’s not to say there aren’t a few comparatively pro-U.S. officials left in the current government and the state bureaucracies. But they’re afraid to say anything in public. In private, they whine endlessly about trivial things the U.S. "could have done differently."

Entirely forgotten is that President Bush was among the first world leaders to recognize Prime Minister Erdogan, while Turkey’s own legal system was still weighing whether he was secular enough for the job. Forgotten have been decades of U.S. military assistance. Forgotten have been years of American efforts to secure a pipeline route for Caspian oil that terminates at the Turkish port of Ceyhan. Forgotten has been the fact that U.S. administrations continue to fight annual attempts in Congress to pass a resolution condemning modern Turkey for the long-ago Armenian genocide. Forgotten has been America’s persistent lobbying for Turkish membership in the European Union.

Forgotten, above all, has been America’s help against the PKK. Its now-imprisoned leader, Abdullah Ocalan, was expelled from Syria in 1998 after the Turks threatened military action. He was then passed like a hot potato between European governments, who refused to extradite him to Turkey because--gasp!--he might face the death penalty. He was eventually caught--with the help of U.S. intelligence--sheltered in the Greek Embassy in Nairobi. "They gave us Ocalan. What could be bigger than that?" says one of a handful of unapologetically pro-U.S. Turks I still know.

I know that Mr. Feith (another Jew, the Turkish press didn’t hesitate to note), and Ms. Rice after him, pressed Turkish leaders on the need to challenge some of the more dangerous rhetoric if they value the Turkey-U.S. relationship. There is no evidence yet that they got a satisfactory answer. Turkish leaders should understand that the "public opinion" they cite is still reversible. But after a few more years of riding the tiger, who knows? Much of Ataturk’s legacy risks being lost, and there won’t be any of the old Ottoman grandeur left, either. Turkey could easily become just another second-rate country: small-minded, paranoid, marginal and--how could it be otherwise?--friendless in America and unwelcome in Europe.

* Mr. Pollock is a senior editorial page writer at the Journal.

2. - Turkish Daily News - "Another charge filed against writer Orhan Pamuk":

Writer Orhan Pamuk allegedly says, ‘30,000 Kurds and 1 million Armenians had been killed in Turkey,’ a statement argued to constitute a crime according to the Turkish Penal Code

ANKARA / 19 February 2005

Another charge has been filed by Kayseri Bar Association attorney Orhan Pekmezci against internationally renowned Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk for statements he reportedly made during an interview with the Swiss daily Tagesanzeiger, published in the newspaper's Feb. 6 issue, reported Anatolia news agency.

“Pamuk has made groundless claims against the Turkish identity, the Turkish military and Turkey as a whole. I think he should be punished for violating Article 159 and 312 of the Turkish Penal Code,” said Pekmezci after filing charges at the Kayseri State Prosecutor's office. “He made a statement provoking the people to hatred and animosity through the media, which is defined as a crime in Article 312.”

Pekmezci claimed that Pamuk said, “30,000 Kurds and 1 million Armenians were killed in Turkey. Almost no one dares to speak out this but me, and the nationalists hate me for that.”

Pamuk the author of six novels and the recipient of major Turkish and international literary awards, has had his work translated into more than 20 languages. His most recent novel is “My Name Is Red.” Pamuk's latest novel, "Kar," (Snow), translated by Maureen Freely, has been included in The New York Times' "100 Notable Books of the Year" list prepared by the daily's "Book Review" section. The review, published every Sunday, has selected 100 notable books from all those it has reviewed since Dec. 7, 2003.

Previously Mehmet Üçok an attorney from the Anatolia Professional Association of Owners of Scientific and Literary Works (ANASAM) filed charges against Pamuk at the Kayseri Public Prosecutor's office.

3. - IslamOnline.net - "Turks Irked By EU Recommendations":

Erdogan said the government would look into the recommendations

ANKARA / 18 February 2005 / By Sa'ad Abdul Majid

European recommendations for Turkey to free citizens' ID cards from religious reference and to stop compulsory religious courses at schools, raised suspicions and drew criticism in the dominantly Muslim country, with some saying the EU recommendations aim at "neutralizing, then swallowing" the Turkish people, and others believing they hurt the country's unity.

"The recommendations of the European Commission Against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) demonstrate an interference in Turkish affairs and aim at harming the unity of the Turkish people," Ali Ozdmer, a retired officer, told IslamOnline.net.

"We are proud that our ID cards highlight our Islamic identity," he said.

The ECRI has urged the Turkish government to drop any reference to religion on the ID cards and to stop the compulsory religious courses in the Turkish schools, alleging such measures would "bring the country's standards into line with the European standards".

The recommendations were put forward February 14, 2005, as part of a program to qualify Turkey to join the European Union.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he was displeased with the ECRI recommendations.

He, however, said the government would look into them and suggested there could be steps to modify the Turkish legislation, according to the Turkish mass media.

Last December, the European Union agreed to open membership talks with Turkey to join the 25-nation bloc.

Drawing Fire

Meanwhile, under a frontpage headline reading: "Do not interfere in our affairs", mass circulation Yeni Safak newspaper lashed out at the European recommendations.

O. Gonenc, opposition Saadet (Happiness) Party member and professor of international relations, said the European recommendations only aim at "neutralizing, then swallowing" the Turkish people.

"The European Commission wants to impose a new treaty on Turkey such as the Sefer agreement (signed in 1926 between the Ottoman Empire and the victorious countries in the World War I) to achieve what they failed to do by war," she said.

For her part, Nesrine Nas, former leader of the Motherland Party, voiced concern over the policies adopted by the Turkish government since the EU decision to launch membership talks with Turkey .

"Over the past two months, the government has done nothing, while the European Union is imposing new demands such as the removal of religion mark on the ID cards and an end to religious classes from schools," she was quoted by the Turkish CNN as saying Wednesday, February 16, 2005 .

The European commission also drew fire from S. Kazan , deputy chairman of the Saadet Party, who also questioned the timing of the commission's report.

"Rights of minorities in Turkey are protected. The non-Muslim minorities live with complete freedom in Turkey .

"I find the demands or recommendations hard to grasp, especially now. The report on minority status in Turkey was issued by the same EU committee in august, 2004."

Angry Reaction

Ordinary citizens also reacted in anger to the European recommendations.

"I don't know what the European Union has to do the religion of the Turkish citizens. What is Europe 's problem with Islam in order to try to impose such demands," said Mohamed Dogan, an employee.

He further stressed that such demands were put forward for political reasons and aimed at blocking Turkey 's membership in the European Union.

Mostafa Gul Safan, a driver, agreed.

"The Europeans want to strip off our Islamic identity. We don't want to join the EU if the price will be deserting Islam."

4. - AFP - "Divided Cyprus defies years of peace efforts Document Actions":

NICOSIA / 18 February 2005

Nicosia remains the last divided capital of the European Union, with reunification efforts stalled since the failure last year of a UN settlement plan, and is a major stumbling block to Turkey's aspirations to join the European bloc.

The eastern Mediterranean island has been a trouble spot for centuries, seized by empire after empire before plunging into bitter ethnic strife between its Turkish- and Greek-Cypriot communities only three years after it won independence.

But its most formidable conflict followed the island's partition in 1974 along ethnic lines when Turkey occupied the northern third with the aim of protecting its kinsmen in the wake of an Athens-engineered Greek-Cypriot coup seeking to unite Cyprus with Greece.

Several rounds of UN efforts to broker a settlement between the internationally recognized Cyprus government and the breakaway Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) have failed in the 30 years after the Turkish invasion.

The problem has now moved into the EU sphere.

A last-ditch bid to reunify the island before it joined the EU was killed off by a referendum last year when a majority of Greek Cypriots in the south voted down the settlement plan drawn up by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.

The Turkish Cypriots, weary of international sanctions imposed on their self-proclaimed statelet and dreaming of EU membership to break their isolation, gave overwhelming backing to the blueprint.

The plan's failure meant that the Greek Cypriots alone joined the EU, turning the issue into a major headache for Brussels and putting the conflict in the freezer.

Since the referendum, the EU, the United Nations and the United States have sought measures to break the Turkish Cypriots' isolation as a reward for the support they gave to the bungled peace initiative.

But they have been slow in coming.

The EU has so far been unable to push Cyprus, which joined the bloc in May, to give the green light to pledges of financial aid and ease trade sanctions on the Turkish Cypriot state.

Washington, on the other hand, announced last week that it will provide expertise and technical assistance to Turkish Cypriot businesses under a 30.5-million-dollar aid package.
Representatives of US businesses arrived in the north of the island on Thursday for talks with Turkish Cypriot entrepreneurs in a landmark visit that let to formal protests by the Cyprus government.

The Cyprus issue moved into a new phase in December when the EU agreed to open accession talks with Turkey on October 3, but on a set of tough conditions, including a demand for Ankara to recognise the island's Greek Cypriot government.

Turkey, which still keeps some 30,000 troops in northern Cyprus, refuses to do so says it will not establish diplomatic ties until a comprehensive solution is found to resolve the island's division. It is the only country to recognise the TRNC.

Ankara sees a settlement as a way out of the increasingly difficult situation and has said it is ready to back any new UN initiative to reunify Cyprus on the basis of the Annan plan, which it says is still on the table.

The Turkish Cypriot government has also said it wants to resume peace talks, but has questioned the Greek Cypriot side's willingness.

Observers say any fresh initiative to reunify the island would have to wait until political stability is established in the TRNC, whose pro-settlement government lost its parliamentary majority shortly after the referendum and resigned in October.

Turkish Cypriots vote this weekend to elect a new government, with little hope of breaking the political deadlock.

The real key to stability, observers agree, lies in the April presidential election, when veteran TRNC leader Rauf Denktash will stand down and clear the way for a new generation of leaders.

5. - AP - "EU welcomes Turkish Cypriot vote results":

21 February 2005

The European Union has welcomed the victory of the pro-EU governing party in parliamentary elections in breakaway northern Cyprus, saying the vote showed Turkish Cypriots are determined to integrate into the EU.

The European Commission said the vote in the northern Turkish Cypriot state would push the bloc to seek early approval of a 259 million euro ($A430.73 million) aid package and special trade concessions for the north.

With 98 per cent of the ballot boxes counted, the Republican Turkish Party had 44 per cent of the vote, while the National Unity Party, which opposes a UN plan for reunifying the island, had around 32 per cent, electoral officials said.

Divided Cyprus was accepted as an EU member in May 2004, but the north does not enjoy the benefits of EU membership because Greek Cypriots in the southern, internationally-recognised half of the Mediterranean island last year rejected the UN reunification plan.

Turkish Cypriots accepted it.

Sunday's "results indicate a clear desire of the Turkish Cypriot community to continue preparations for their full integration into the EU," the European Commission said in a statement.

It added that the aid package - held up because of wrangling over the status of Northern Cyprus in the EU - will end "the isolation of the Turkish Cypriot community and facilitate reunification by encouraging the economic development of the Turkish Cypriot community".

Cyprus has been split into the Greek Cypriot-controlled south and the Turkish-occupied north since Turkey invaded in 1974 in the wake of an abortive coup by supporters of union with Greece.

The breakaway state in the north is only recognised by Turkey, which maintains 40,000 troops there.

6. - The New York Times - "Iraqi Kurds Detail Demands for a Degree of Autonomy":

SULAIMANIYA / 17 February 2005 / by Edward Wong*

From his snow-covered mountain fortress, Massoud Barzani sees little other than the rugged hills of Iraqi Kurdistan and green-clad militiamen posted along the serpentine road below.

The border with the Arab-dominated rest of Iraq is far off. Baghdad lies even farther off and, if Kurdish leaders like Mr. Barzani have their way, will fade almost entirely out of the picture here.

Since the fall of Saddam Hussein, the Kurds have made known their determination to retain a degree of autonomy in the territory they have dominated for more than a decade. Now, after their strong performance in the elections last month, Kurdish leaders are for the first time spelling out specific demands.

From control of oil reserves to the retention of the Kurdish militia, the pesh merga, to full authority over taxation, the requested powers add up to an autonomy that is hard to distinguish from independence.

"The fact remains that we are two different nationalities in Iraq - we are Kurds and Arabs," Mr. Barzani said as he sat in a reception hall at his headquarters in Salahuddin. "If the Kurdish people agree to stay in the framework of Iraq in one form or another as a federation, then other people should be grateful to them."

Kurdish autonomy is expected to be one of the most divisive issues during the drafting of the new constitution, alongside the debate over the role of Islam in the new Iraq. The Kurds' demands are already alarming Iraq's Arabs, particularly the majority Shiites, and raising tensions with neighboring countries, where governments are trying to suppress Kurdish separatist movements within their own borders.

In interviews, top Kurdish leaders like Mr. Barzani, head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, set out a list of demands that are more far-reaching than the Kurds have articulated in the past:

They want the ownership of any natural resources, including oilfields, and the power to determine how the revenues are split with the central government.

They want authority over the formidable militia called the pesh merga, estimated at up to 100,000 members, in defiance of the American goal of dismantling ethnic and sectarian armies. The pesh merga would be under nominal national oversight, but actual control would remain with regional commanders. No other armed forces would be allowed to enter Kurdistan without permission from Kurdish officials.

They want power to appoint officials to work in and operate ministries in Kurdistan, which would parallel those in Baghdad. These would include the ministries that oversee security and the economy.

They want authority over fiscal policy, including oversight of taxes and the power to decide how much tax revenue goes to Baghdad. The national government would make monetary policy but would not be able to raise revenue from Kurdistan without the agreement of Kurdish officials.

Moreover, the region's borders would be changed, in the Kurds' vision. The "green line" that defines the boundary between the Kurdistan and the rest of Iraq would be officially pushed south, to take in the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, the city of Khanaqin and the area of Sinjar. Kurdish leaders argue that this would just reestablish historic borders where Mr. Hussein had drastically altered the demographics by displacing Kurds with Arab settlers.

"It must be clear in the constitution what is for the Kurds and what is for the Iraqi government," said Fouad Hussein, an influential independent Kurdish politician.

The fierce political drive of the Kurds, who make up a fifth of Iraq's 28 million people, became apparent during the Jan. 30 elections, when turnout across the three provinces of Iraqi Kurdistan - Sulaimaniya, Erbil and Dohuk - averaged 84 percent, well above the national average of 58 percent.

Those votes secured for the main Kurdish alliance 75 of 275 seats in the constitutional assembly. The alliance finished second, behind the main Shiite slate, which ended up with a slim majority of 140 seats, which is short of the two-thirds needed to form a government.

The Kurds are now in the position of kingmaker, courted by the Shiite parties and competing smaller groups like the secular slate led by Prime Minister Ayad Allawi.

The Kurds are asking for Mr. Barzani's main rival, Jalal Talabani, to be chosen as president. More audacious is their insistence on broad powers for their region under a federal system. The autonomy envisioned by the Kurds is likely to inflame the formerly ruling Sunni Arabs, who lack officially authorized militias and rich natural resources in their own traditional territory.

But it is the Shiites, having finally achieved here after decades of struggle, who are likely to offer the strongest opposition to Kurdish autonomy.

The top Shiite clerics "are very difficult," said Nawzad Hadi Mawlood, the governor of Erbil Province, the largest Kurdish province. "They're hard negotiators," he said. "They're inflexible. The Shia do not want to admit the federal system for the Kurds."

Many Shiite leaders complain that the Kurds press too many demands and already exercise power in the interim government out of proportion with their numbers. Kurds hold the posts of deputy prime minister, foreign minister and the head of Parliament, as well as one of two vice presidencies.

"There is a sense that the Kurds have taken more privileges than the others," said Sheik Humam Hamoudi, a senior official of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a powerful Shiite party. "So we advise the Kurds to be more Iraqi."

Besides holding more than a quarter of the seats in the constitutional assembly, the Kurds have another powerful tool in the transitional law approved last spring. Under that law, a two-thirds vote in any three provinces can veto a national referendum on the constitution. Kurdish leaders could easily mobilize such a vote.

The relatively secular Kurds might also make a deal with the religious Shiites in which the Kurds would gain significant autonomy in return for agreeing not to block Shiite efforts to establish an Islamic form of government elsewhere in Iraq.

Kurdish leaders argue that their push for federalism is nothing more than an attempt to maintain the status quo. Iraqi Kurdistan, a mountainous area the size of Switzerland, has existed as an autonomous region since the end of the Persian Gulf war of 1991, when the American military established a no-flight zone in northern Iraq.

"Like all the nations of the world, all the people of the world, we have the ability to rule ourselves, and we've proven that in the last 14 years," Hezha Anoor, 18, said as he and his friends stood outside a Chinese restaurant here in Sulaimaniya, the capital of eastern Kurdistan.

Iraqi Kurdish leaders maintain that while they would like to see an independent Kurdistan in their lifetimes, secession is not practical now.

The threat from countries like Turkey is too great, they say. And the economy of Kurdistan, which depended on smuggling during the United Nations sanctions against Iraq imposed in the 1990's, would benefit from sharing in revenues from the vast southern oilfields, said Barham Salih, the deputy prime minister of Iraq and a top Kurdish official.

Yet if the Kurdish leaders do succeed in winning strong autonomy, that could inspire greater calls for independence. "Iraq is a beast," Pire Mughan, 63, a grizzled poet and former pesh merga fighter, said as he sipped tea in the shadow of the citadel of Erbil. "Arabs are beasts, because their entire history is one of killings and massacres.

"I didn't vote for anyone in the elections, because I believe in independence, not in federalism. If I had voted, it would have meant voting for federalism, and that would have been treason for future generations."

* Dexter Filkins contributed reporting from Baghdad for this article.

7. - Toronto Star - "A golden chance for the Kurds":

Victims of Iraq history must play cards carefully

20 February 2005 / by Haroon Siddiqui

It's poetic justice that the historically victimized Shiites and Kurds of Iraq are about to assume power.

Ever since the creation of the country from the spoils of the Ottoman Empire, both groups have been persecuted and double-crossed, among others, by the United States.

In the 1920s, both played pivotal roles in the rebellion against British occupation. But they lost post-colonial power to the minority Sunnis, a British deal that lasted until the Anglo-American toppling of Saddam Hussein 22 months ago.

In the 1990s, the Shiites and the Kurds were also victims of the chaotic aftermath of the first Gulf War. They rose up against Saddam, on the say-so of America, only to be abandoned to his helicopter gunships.

What George H. W. Bush had wronged, the son has righted — even if through an illegal invasion and botched occupation.

While the majority Shiites have emerged clear winners of the Jan. 30 election, the second-place Kurds are the more cohesive and may become kingmakers. They deserve to.

Described as the largest ethnic group without a state, they were promised independence after World War I. But their land was carved up between Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. They fought their first big battle in 1926 against Turkey. In 1946 they set up a short-lived Republic of Mahabad in northwestern Iran.

Their leader, Mullah Mustafa Barzani, a legendary mountain warrior, then went into exile in Russia. He was enticed back to Iraq in 1958 with false promises of regional autonomy.

In 1974, the Shah of Iran supplied the Kurds with arms, but not because he believed in their cause. His was a tactical move, to pressure Baghdad on Iranian claims on the Shatt al-Arab waterway. Once his ploy worked, he discarded them.

With the Iranian border and their escape route closed, the Kurds were bombed by the Iraqi air force. About 250,000 of them were forced out of the area and, in a Stalin-like move, replaced by Arabs enticed from other parts of the country.

In the 1980s, the Kurds played a card of their own, siding with Iran in the Iraq-Iran war. Saddam attacked them with chemical bombs. Overall, it is estimated that he killed between 150,000 and 170,000 Kurds. Their fate turned only after their post-1991 Gulf War tragedy shamed America and Britain into creating no-fly zones, one for them and another for the Shiites in the south.

The Kurds almost blew their golden chance because of internal struggles between the Kurdish Democratic party, now led by Barzani's son, Massoud, and the rival Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, led by Jalal Talebani.

They have since settled their differences, divided up their 43,000-square-kilometre territory and established regional self-rule. Their militia of about 60,000 joined the 2003 American invasion and helped erase the radical Ansar al-Islam guerrillas. As a result, their area was the least affected by the war.

The Kurds are now at a historic turn, ready with a pragmatic agenda. They want Quebec-like autonomy, not independence, despite strong grassroots separatist sentiment. They want control over oil revenues and a fixed share of the federal budget.

They want Talebani as president in the new government.

But the most nettlesome Kurdish demand is their claim over the oil centres of Kirkuk and Mosul, which lie outside their three provinces. They consider Kirkuk their ancestral capital. And they want to "de-Arabize" the area, by compensating the Arabs.

That has regional implications.

The area used to belong to the Ottomans, and was taken away from Turkey in the post-World War I arrangements. Turkey does not want the Iraqi Kurds to become economically strong enough to demand outright independence. That might encourage the Turkish Kurds, whose guerrilla insurgency Ankara has crushed.

There is one more complication. The area is also home to the Turkmen minority, whose cause Turkey champions.

It used to be said that Iraq was so difficult to govern that it needed a brutal dictator like Saddam to hold it together.

Iraqis may be about to prove the opposite. The give-and-take of democracy may, in fact, spare them the fate of the former Yugoslavia.

* Haroon Siddiqui is the Star's editorial page editor emeritus. (hsiddiq@thestar.ca)

8. - Kurdistan Observer - "Depicting Kurds' Misery With Tough Lyricism":

18 February 2005 / by A. O. Scott

'Turtles Can Fly' is the third feature film that Bahman Ghobadi, a Kurdish director from Iran, has made about the suffering and resilience of his people, who have the bad luck to live spread across the often volatile borders of several nation-states, including Turkey and Iraq.

While the status of the Kurdish nation remains perilous, Mr. Ghobadi has set out to give the Kurds a national cinema, and to bring their traditions and their language, as well as their troubles, to the attention of global audiences.

His new film arrives garlanded with awards from international film festivals. Like its predecessors - "A Time for Drunken Horses" and "Marooned in Iraq" (also known as "Songs of My Motherland") - it presents a harsh account of war, displacement and deprivation that is saved from utter bleakness by a tough, earthy lyricism. Like many other Iranian filmmakers, Mr. Ghobadi often uses children in his movies, for their guilelessness and vulnerability, and also because they are scrappy, stubborn and naturally funny. Adults are fairly peripheral in the world of "Turtles Can Fly," which is set in a mountainside village in Iraq that incorporates a swelling refugee camp. The time is early 2003, and the villagers wait, with a mixture of hope and trepidation, for the Second Gulf War to begin, and try to find news of its arrival. The chronology makes it a kind of sequel to "Marooned in Iraq," which took place just after the Persian Gulf war of 1991, when Saddam Hussein attacked the Kurds after his defeat by the American-led coalition. The war-weary Kurds in this film, foreseeing the end of Mr. Hussein's rule, also worry the American invasion will bring a new round of violence.

Mr. Ghobadi filmed "Turtles" in Iraqi Kurdistan shortly after the end of major combat was declared, and he appears agnostic about whether the American intervention will improve daily life. Daily life, in any case, interests him more than politics, and his camera pushes through scenes of bustle and confusion, looking for moments of clarity. The people in the film, meanwhile, are impatiently searching for information. Among the first images we see is a hallucinatory vista of makeshift antennas propped up in a field, like lightning rods or windmills. Atop one of them is a lanky, nerdy boy, with oversize glasses and a backward baseball cap, whose nickname is Satellite (Soran Ebrahim). He is the village's main source of technical know-how, and later he lives up to his name by acquiring a dish that allows the local elders to peruse "prohibited channels" full of music videos before settling on Fox News, which Satellite pretends to translate for them. He serves as the de facto mayor of the local children, many of them orphans, who gather spent artillery shells and defused land mines to sell in the nearby town. Satellite's best friend has been maimed by a mine, as has Satellite's new rival, a boy who has lost his arms and who shows up one day with his sister and a baby whose parentage is mysterious.

The hardships these children have faced are horrifying, and Mr. Ghobadi neither sweetens nor sensationalizes them, which makes "Turtles Can Fly" all the more painful to watch. It is a heartbreaking film, and cruelty sometimes seems to be not only its subject but its method. Like the child on a high cliff that is one of its recurring images, the film walks up to the edge of hopelessness and pauses there, waiting to see what happens next.