28 February 2005

1. "Kurdish ex-lawmakers plead innocent in Turkey retrial", four Kurdish former lawmakers, including award-winning human rights activist Leyla Zana, pleaded innocent and asked for a fair hearing Friday in a high-profile retrial for alleged links with armed Kurdish rebels.

2. "Turkish best seller describes war against America, exposing Turkish fears of eroding relationship", in one of Turkey's best-selling thrillers, U.S. troops in northern Iraq open fire on a group of Turkish commandos, setting off a war between the NATO allies.

3. "The unarmed terrorist", or the kafkaesque traits of the Turkish state and judiciary.

4. "Turkey's European dream faces reality of North Cyprus", the campaign was tight and fought over grand issues. The election was held in free and fluent fashion, in a country struggling for its future under ambiguous circumstances.

5. "Turkey plans Cyprus talks with EU", Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul was quoted yesterday as saying Ankara would hold talks in early March with the European Union on the thorny issue of signing a protocol extending its customs union to Cyprus.

6. "Revenge of the Kurds", buoyed by election success, an Iraqi minority aims to expand its influence. Could it fracture the country?

7. "Iraq: Kurds Increase Pressure For Federation", Iraqi Kurds are stepping up pressure for the country to become a federation in the wake of their strong showing in the January elections. The Kurds now are the second largest bloc in Iraq's National Assembly and have emerged as the swing-vote that both contenders for prime minister are courting.

8. "Kurds demanding to keep their army in any future Iraq", if the Kurds succeed, they will achieve the right of regional powers to set up their own armies, possibly leading to warlord-style fiefs across Iraq.

1. - AFP - "Kurdish ex-lawmakers plead innocent in Turkey retrial":

ANKARA / 25 February 2005

Four Kurdish former lawmakers, including award-winning human rights activist Leyla Zana, pleaded innocent and asked for a fair hearing Friday in a high-profile retrial for alleged links with armed Kurdish rebels.

"I reject the accusations," Zana told the court in Ankara in her first defence argument in the trial. "The trial should be fair and in line with the decision of the (Turkish) appeals court and the European Court of Human Rights."

Her colleagues and co-defendants -- Hatip Dicle, Selim Sadak and Orhan Dogan -- also pleaded not guilty.

The court set the next hearing for April 22 after the defence team asked for more time to present their view on how the retrial should be conducted in light of recent legal amendments aimed at drawing Turkey closer to the European Union.

Zana and her colleagues are standing trial for the third time on charges of colloborating with an armed Kurdish rebellion in southeastern Turkey.

They were released in June after 10 years in jail and are unlikely to go back to prison even if they are convicted again.

They were allowed a retrial in March 2004 thanks to democracy reforms that Turkey adopted in a bid to boost its prospects for EU membership.

They have been adopted as prisoners of conscience by the EU, and the European Parliament awarded Zana its prestigious Sakharov human rights prize in 1995.

A court in Ankara confirmed their sentences earlier this year, but the appeals court overturned the ruling, paving the way for their current retrial.

2. - AP - "Turkish best seller describes war against America, exposing Turkish fears of eroding relationship":

ISTANBUL / 25 February 2005

In one of Turkey's best-selling thrillers, U.S. troops in northern Iraq open fire on a group of Turkish commandos, setting off a war between the NATO allies.

The book is "Metal Storm," and although pure fiction set in the year 2007, it highlights the deep fears many Turks harbor that the U.S. invasion of Iraq will put the decades-long allies on a collision course.

The suspicion has become so serious that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in a meeting with Turkish leaders earlier this month, raised concerns about the negative image of the United States in Turkey, American and Turkish diplomats said.

During the Cold War, Turkey and the United States saw their alliance as crucial to stopping Soviet expansion.

But now, the critical security issue to both countries is Iraq, where the two sides have vital interests that could conflict.

Washington sees Iraqi Kurds as key allies in bringing stability to the country. Turkey, however, is terrified that growing Iraqi Kurdish power could inspire Kurds in Turkey, where the army has battled autonomy-seeking Kurdish insurgents for decades.

A turning point for Turkey came in 2003 when U.S. forces seized 11 Turkish soldiers in northern Iraq whom they suspected of plotting to assassinate a top Iraqi Kurdish official. U.S. soldiers handcuffed the Turks and put sacks on over their heads, which many Turks considered an extreme humiliation.

In the United States, officials felt an important ally let them down when Turkey balked at allowing in U.S. troops for the Iraq invasion. The Turkish government also took so long to come to a clear decision that ships carrying weapons and equipment for a U.S. infantry division slated to take part in the Iraq attack circled for weeks off the coast of the country.

The book is "fiction but in Turkey everyone is questioning whether there will eventually be a conflict between America and Turkey," Cem Kucuk, an editor at Timas Yayinlari, the book's publisher, said in an interview Tuesday.

Criticism of U.S. policies is hardly new in Turkey and has long been championed by leftist and pro-Islamic groups.

"What is new and what makes this anti-Americanism so widespread now and so strong is the large mass which includes the elite and the intellectuals ... and some of the military," said Sami Kohen, a columnist for the Milliyet newspaper. "All of these elements who ... had a lot of sympathy for the United States are turning against" America.

"There is a perception that the United States is encouraging ... Kurds in Iraq and they are not taking into account the concerns of the Turkish government," Kohen said.

Turkish newspapers have been filled with stories of the increasing tensions. Kohen said that in questions that he has fielded at university lectures and conferences, the United States "is being portrayed more as a hostile country than an ally."

Also Turkey's ruling party, the Justice and Development Party, has its roots in the Islamic movement, whose members have sometimes identified more with besieged Iraqis than with the United States.

"The (party's) base is radically anti-American and is very sensitive to populist policies," columnist Cuneyt Ulsever wrote in the Turkish Daily News.

Many Turks also fear the United States may soon provoke a conflict with neighboring Iran, further inflaming tensions.

A BBC World Service Poll taken in 21 countries, showed a chart-topping 82 percent of Turks felt that President Bush's re-election was a negative for global peace and security. In France, the figure was 75 percent. The poll of 21,953 people was conducted from Nov. 15- Jan. 3 by the international polling group GlobeScan together with the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland. It has a margin of error per country that ranged from 2.5 percent to 4 percent.

"It is impossible not to see the anti-American movement's rise," columnist Ismet Berkan wrote in the daily Radikal.

Turkish officials have been working hard to blunt the hostility on the street and have recently emphasized the importance of the relationship with the United States.

In Brussels, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was asked about anti-American sentiments.

"Let's not focus on this but on making friends," Erdogan said after meeting Tuesday with Bush. "At the moment, our relations are just fine."

While criticism of Bush and U.S. policy has skyrocketed, there is little hostility toward Americans on the streets and officials have taken pains to point out that just a few years ago, President Bill Clinton was enormously popular in the country.

Burak Turna, co-author of the book, says he wrote "Metal Storm" to try to prevent a U.S.-Turkish clash.

"Our message to the United States is that we don't want chaos in the region," said Turna. "The book is not anti-American but is a criticism of U.S. policy and shows how things could end up if we continue on this way."

In the book, U.S. tanks quickly pour across the Iraqi border into Turkey, annihilating Turkish forces while U.S. warplanes target Istanbul. A Turkish agent, acting on his own initiative, exacts his revenge. He detonates a nuclear bomb in a park in Washington that levels the U.S. capital.

The book has sold 100,000 copies in just two months, a record in Turkey, Kucuk said, and six of Turkey's largest bookstores say it is one of their top 10 sellers.

Turna urged the United States to review its policies and consult more with its allies but said he was not confident that Bush's just concluded reconciliation trip to Europe will have much impact.

"It is a very desperate attempt to mend fences," Turna said. "As long as the U.S. goes on its way it is not possible to mend fences."

3. - TAZ / Kurdish Media - "The unarmed terrorist":

ISTANBUL / 21 February 2005 /
by Juergen Gottschlich / translated by KurdishMedia.com

Mehmet Bakir is a frail man. He speaks with a soft voice, and is polite and courteous. He apologizes repeatedly for being a bit late, and is worried about missing a chance to tell his story. Mehmet Bakir, a 41-year-old Kurd from Turkey, is a terrorist. That, at any rate, is the belief of a court in the western Turkish metropolis of Izmir, which convicted him of this crime a year and a half ago.

As he relates what he is accused of, there is for an instant something like scorn in his voice. Yet he immediately catches himself and flips nervously through his file in order to fish out a legal document to prove how absurd the accusations are.

Normally Bakir lives and works as a freelance journalist in Berlin. Yet he hasn’t been there in over two years. He was suspected of being a member, and even the founder, of an obscure terrorist organization. He still does not know the reason for this. Even today, two and a half years after getting caught up in the wheels of the police and the judiciary, he can only speculate as to why his life has turned into an ongoing nightmare. Even so, he finds it difficult to relate things in a coherent manner; he seems exhausted, and jumps around in his story.

The day on which it all began was the 9th of July, 2002. He was sitting in the car with an acquaintance whom he had met a few days earlier on vacation in Kusadasi, a beach resort on the Aegean coast of Turkey. They were en route to his father’s vacation house. Mehmet Desde, the acquaintance, was also from Germany, and had just brought the ashes of his deceased father to be buried in Turkey.

While on the road, they were stopped by two police cars, yanked out of the car, and taken to Foca. Bakir tells the story: “When we came out of the police station in handcuffs to be taken to Izmir, there were already four local journalists waiting there, who evidently had been tipped off by the police.” The police presented the prisoners as a great catch. Later he read of it in the newspaper: “Head of a Terrorist Band Arrested”

Bakir and Desde were interrogated for four days by the counter-terrorist police in Izmir. They were not allowed to sleep, and they had to stand by a wall until they collapsed. They were sprayed with cold water, shouted at, beaten, and asked over and over the same thing: Who was in the BP KK-T, what did the organization intend, and what assassinations were planned? “We knew nothing about it; we weren’t familiar with any BP KK-T; what were we supposed to say?”

Now at least he knows what the acronym means. The “Bolshevist Party of North Kurdistan and Turkey” is said to have been in existence for 20 years, and to have its headquarters in Germany.

There are traces of this organization to be found on the internet, and on a few flyers that were distributed years ago in Izmir and Bursa. According to these, the group was said to have devoted itself to armed democratic struggle. Otherwise, the group has never been evident in any way. No one knows it, and no one knows its representatives.

Four days after the torture in the interrogation rooms of the counter-terrorist police, Bakir and Desde were brought before a criminal judge. There they encountered three other familiar faces. All five had but one thing in common: They had all stayed in the same hotel in Kusadasi at the same time. The police claimed that a meeting of the “BP KK-T” had taken place in the hotel. And Mehmet Bakir and Mehmet Desde, who had come from Germany, had there given instructions to their local cadres.

For Bakir, there is only one explanation for why he and Desde had been seen as the founders and leaders of the organization: Both of their families originated in Tunceli province, one of the centers of the Kurdish rebel movement. Bakir had come to Istanbul with his family as a small child, and later they moved to Germany together. Desde, four years older, had also lived in Germany for 24 years, and had in the meantime become a German citizen. Bakir says: “I had never even seen the town of Tunceli until a few months earlier.”

In a trial in which the judges invented the absurd concept of “unarmed terrorists”, the five were in July 2003, a year after their capture, sentenced by the State Security Court in Izmir to 50 months imprisonment as the founders of the “BP KK-T”.

This had been preceded by six months of investigative detention and six months of preparation for the trial, which the defendants spent in relative freedom. This was indeed relative, as the court had seized the passports of both Bakir and Desde and prohibited them from returning to Germany. The accused remain free, because their attorneys have appealed. “If we had accepted the verdict at that time, I would probably be free and back in Berlin again by now, factoring in the investigative detention period and the almost-obligatory reduction in sentences.”

In the meantime, things seemed to go a bit better for him. The government of [Recep] Tayyip Erdogan that was elected in November 2002 initiated a wide-ranging reform process in the course of which the anti-terrorism laws were substantially amended, and the State Security Courts were abolished.

In addition, the Erdogan government announced a zero-tolerance stance against torture.

Bakir can only smile at this. “The police spit at that, and so do the courts” he says. Both he and Desde complained of torture to the criminal judge immediately after the four days of detention in the hands of the counter-terrorism police, and then later to the responsible state prosecutor. The state prosecutor’s office immediately disregarded Bakir’s complaint, and the other was only taken seriously when the German Consulate in Izmir intervened on behalf of the two German citizens.

After more than a year, on 2 October 2003, a case was opened in the court in Izmir against four police officers on charges of torture. The chief of the counter-terrorism section at the time, who has since risen to the position of deputy police chief in the provincial capital of Aydin, has to date not appeared for any of the court dates. The court allegedly lacks a valid address to which to deliver a summons, and so the case has been postponed over and over. “Nothing will come out of it” fears Bakir. He has not even been allowed to present testimony as a witness.

Nonetheless, it seems that the reforms will not send the torturers to prison, but will at least save Bakir and the other defendants from their miserable situation. In April of 2004, the Supreme Court of Appeals overturned the verdict of the State Security Court and sent the case back to the local court for serious crimes in Izmir, which now -- following the abolition of the State Security Courts – has jurisdiction for the BP KK-T case. The new treatment of the case had been scheduled for early October.

It all seemed that the retrial would be a mere formality, but it turned out otherwise.

The judges in the new criminal court were the same as those in the earlier State Security Court. The case was even heard in the same building.

Immediately after the first trial session, in which the defendants were only able to register their arguments regarding the verdict of the appeals court, a guilty verdict against the quintet around Bakir was pronounced on 12 October. Even though the prosecutor had argued for acquittal, the judge merely reduced the length of the sentence from 50 to 30 months. They also maintained the prohibition on Bakir and Desde traveling out of the country.

Why this happened is not clear to Mehmet Bakir. “In other cases, this same court corrected itself, but we were evidently too rebellious. They got irritated because we had publicized our case.”

But it is certain that the appeals court will again annul the verdict. “The accusations were simply pulled out of the air, and are completely baseless.”

But by that time, yet another year will have passed. Bakir is married to a German citizen of Kurdish origin. His wife continues to live in Berlin, and is unable, and also unwilling, to come to Istanbul. He fears that his relationship will break up over the entire affair.

His financial situation is also precarious. He is staying with a brother in a suburb of Istanbul, but the brother, a teacher, has only a limited income.
“He is divorced, and his two children that he takes care of. Nonetheless, I am primarily living at his expense.”

Mehmet Bakir does some work with certain newspapers, but he cannot get a full-time job as long as the trial is ongoing. “In addition, I would have to tell my employer about my situation. No one would hire me.” So he gets by as a photojournalist, and dreams of having an exhibition of his work someday. His real love is theater and film. He would like to write a play, or take part in making a film, as an assistant director or even a director.

“I have talent for things like that”, he says, and then adds “or so my friends say” in order not to seem too arrogant.

4. - The Australian - "Turkey's European dream faces reality of North Cyprus":

LEFKOSA / 28 February 2005 / by Nicolas Rothwell

THE campaign was tight and fought over grand issues. The election was held in free and fluent fashion, in a country struggling for its future under ambiguous circumstances.

Emotions were intense, the turn-out high. Yet not a single international observer jetted in to watch last week's polls in the self-proclaimed Turkish Republic of North Cyprus.

Image is something of a problem for this tiny sliver of a statelet – a small part of a small island, and recognised as independent only by the country that set it up, Turkey.

The region, where 200,000 Turkish Cypriots live, has been isolated from direct contact with the non-Turkish world since its unilateral declaration of sovereignty, first made 30 years ago during a crisis in relations between the island's Greek and Turkish communities.

But an intriguing end-game may be approaching: the signs suggest the eastern Mediterranean's most baffling political stand-off may well be resolved in the decade ahead.

The key lies with Europe, and with the new mainland Turkish leadership's determination to secure entry to the European Union. The Turks of North Cyprus share this dream, which formed a centrepiece of the winning campaign of the Republican Turkish Party.

But there is a check to their ambitions: Greek Cyprus, which was admitted to full membership of the EU last year, and holds a blocking veto over European decisions.

Turkey's reformist Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan succeeded in December in extracting from the EU member states a start date for talks on Ankara's own contentious entry to the European club.

Cyprus was one of the stumbling blocks. And at the last minute Erdogan conceded in vague terms an intention by his Government to recognise, by this October – if only indirectly, in trade protocols – the Greek Cyprus republic.

This is the backdrop to the intricate map of Turkish Cyprus politics – a small-scale, but peculiarly complex election-oriented world.

The vote last week was the third poll in the past year, and even that is being viewed as a prelude to the April 17 presidential elections, at which a replacement will be selected for Rauf Denktas, the father-figure of the little republic.

Another trans-national player is also embedded in Cyprus: the UN, whose forces keep the peace along the "green line" dividing the two halves of the island.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan last year produced a plan for the reunification of Cyprus that was put to simultaneous referendums in the Greek and Turkish republics. The proposals were seen by most observers as eminently fair and reasonable, and as a natural path away from the ethnic division of the island and towards peace.

The Annan plan was turned down by the Greek Cypriots, but accepted by 65 per cent of the Turkish Cypriots, who had long been regarded as uncompromising autonomists.

Confusing? Surreal? Oddly appropriate, though, as the prevailing political climate for Turkish Cyprus, which has developed into one of the world's stranger places, an affecting combination of cultural treasure-house, downmarket British holiday resort and military exercise ground.

Empty four-lane highways lead between ghost towns. And down them the forces of the Turkish army, which makes up almost a sixth of the tiny republics population, trundle to their next deployment.

How to chart a course for a society so imprinted by its history? The key figure in Turkish-Cypriot politics is Prime Minister Mehmet Ali Talat, a keen backer of the Annan plan, who went to the polls chiefly to obtain a parliamentary mandate to work towards the goal of reunification.

Talat's leftish CTP boosted its share of the vote dramatically but fell just short of a majority in the 50-seat legislature. Support dropped for the right-wing National Unity Party of Dervis Eroglu, which opposes the Annan plan.

The CTP will almost certainly renew its coalition with the Democratic Party, led by Serdar Denktas, the outgoing President's son. This will give the new government under Talat a stable majority, after fraught months of minority control in the parliament.

The DP shares with the CTP a burning desire to end the island's international isolation and join the EU family. This mirrors the seachange in popular mood that seems to have come about in great part because of mainland Turkey's courtship of Europe.

"The real question for Turkish Cyprus is not what you hear spoken about, all our big decisions," says one political leader. "It is what others will do. What will Europe do about us, now we are stretching out our hand? What will the Greek Cyprus side do? What will Turkey do?"

These are serious inquiries.

In his first declarations in the post-election week, Talat, who is now expected to contest and win the Turkish Cyprus presidency, was upbeat, insisting "history is being reversed", and saying the world could see that the people of Turkish Cyprus were now the advocates of a final settlement.

His Foreign Minister, Serdar Denktas, has written to Annan pledging readiness to find a solution, and the UN chief has sent an anguished note to the (Greek) Cypriot Government, asking it to explain the objections to his plan.

But the atmospherics on the other side of the green line are not yet full of promise. Greek Cypriot leader Tassos Papadopoulos and his administration regard the elections in Turkish Cyprus – indeed the whole republic – as illegitimate.

The Greek Cypriots, with more than 600,000 people, see themselves as the majority community, holding the stronger cards, and are not keen to broker a deal between equals.

Stalemate again. But faint prospects for progress towards the goal all sides proclaim they desire – a reunified island – can be discerned.

Rumours are rife that the Greek Cypriots are seeking talks with Erdogan. And the shift in the Turkish Cyprus parliamentary landscape, hinted at in the 2004 referendum, has been completed by last week's vote: the Turkish-Cypriot electorate has swung behind the EU vision.

Although no one in the tranquil squares of Gazimagusa or Girne is keen to stress the point, the political map of Turkish Cyprus has changed because the old certainties are dying.

It was always assumed that Turkey, with its potent army, would act as last-resort defender of the Turkish Cyprus enterprise. But now Ankara is petitioning its way into an EU where Greece and Cyprus sit in judgment on its case.

A Cyprus settlement will have to be reached before Ankara takes its place in the union. Talks between Turkey and the EU on a formula for Ankara to extend a form of recognition to Greek Cyprus begin this month, and will be closely watched in North Cyprus.

Erdogan is determined and energetic. He may just be able to broker some European-backed negotiations between the two sides on Cyprus, with a confederation of the two communities the goal.

But if a Cyprus reunified on something close to Greek terms is the ultimate price of Turkish EU membership, it is a price Erdogan, or his successors, may begin to consider worthwhile.

A viable future is still as elusive as ever in Turkish Cyprus. But the Mediterranean's last land of lotus-eaters is gripped by a distant sense of impending earthquake.

"We are having all these elections," says a historian in Gazimagusa, in the shadow of Othello's tower. "And we're falling in love with democracy. A nice idea – but the votes that matter to us are all still being taken elsewhere."

5. - Cyprus Mail - "Turkey plans Cyprus talks with EU":

26 February 2005

Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul was quoted yesterday as saying Ankara would hold talks in early March with the European Union on the thorny issue of signing a protocol extending its customs union to Cyprus.

Turkey does not recognise the Republic of Cyprus. But Ankara cannot begin its own talks in October to join the EU without first signing the customs union protocol.

“Negotiations on the customs union protocol begin at the start of March. Our friends will head for Brussels in a few days’ time,” the Radikal daily quoted Gul as saying.

EU diplomats say Turkey had been expected to sign the protocol by now and that Ankara was dragging its feet over a pledge it made at last December’s historic summit which set October 3, 2005, as the date for the launch of its accession talks.

The Referans daily said the talks on the protocol could last two months.

When Turkey finally signs the protocol extending its customs union with the EU to Cyprus and nine other new member states, it is also expected to issue a declaration making clear the move does not amount to political recognition of Cyprus.
sive settlement reuniting Cyprus.

Gul said Turkey would soon name its chief negotiator for the EU entry talks, an appointment keenly awaited by financial markets.

The chief negotiator will have a key role in what is sure to be tough bargaining on the exact terms and conditions of Turkey’s eventual membership. The accession talks are widely expected to last up to a decade.

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday the post would be filled by a politician, not a bureaucrat, but ruled out Gul himself taking the job.

Gul denied suggestions that the government lacked a sense of urgency in preparing for the EU talks.

“We are not lying down, we are working,” he told Radikal.

6. - TIME Online Edition - "Revenge of the Kurds":

Buoyed by election success, an Iraqi minority aims to expand its influence. Could it fracture the country?

SULAIMANIYAH / 27 February 2005 / by Andrew Lee Butters

Jalal Talabani knows what it's like to be a marked man. In 1989, after Saddam Hussein's army had ravaged the Kurdish population of northern Iraq with chemical weapons, the dictator offered amnesty to all Kurdish soldiers who fought against him—except one. Saddam ordered his minions to hunt down Talabani, a chief of the Kurdish separatist guerrillas known as the peshmerga. If Talabani was caught, Saddam vowed, he would put him to death.

It's a testament to Talabani's knack for survival that he not only managed to elude Saddam's forces but also is now poised to assume the job of his former nemesis. A coalition of Kurdish political parties, which Talabani helped lead, came in a strong second in Iraq's national elections, winning 75 of the new Assembly's 275 seats. That gave the Kurds, who make up 17% of Iraq's population, enough clout to demand top jobs in the new government. While the victorious Shi'ites last week tapped Ibrahim al-Jaafari for Iraq's most powerful position of Prime Minister, Talabani, 72, has emerged as the most likely successor to Saddam as Iraq's President. And though the post is intended to be largely symbolic, Talabani plans to use the position of titular head of state to protect Kurdish interests. "I must have the right to participate with the government in ruling the country," he told TIME in an interview at his headquarters in the northern Iraq mountain stronghold of Qala Chwala. "We want to be partners in reshaping Iraq."

The question is, How much of the country do Talabani and the Kurds want to reshape? The Kurds are holding out for at least six Cabinet posts, including head of the crucial Oil Ministry. They also say they are owed money from the U.N.'s oil-for-food program. A U.N. spokesman told TIME that $3.7 billion in Kurdish money was handed to the Coalition Provisional Authority. So far the Kurds have collected about $1.4 billion of that. They also want assurances that the Kurdish-dominated north will retain the autonomy it has enjoyed since the end of the first Gulf War, when the U.S. established a no-fly zone to protect the Kurds, and that the new Iraqi constitution will not impose Islamic law, as some prominent Shi'ite clerics have demanded. But some Kurdish ambitions could trigger ethnic disputes that would reverberate beyond Iraq's borders. The Kurds' election success has emboldened those who want to expand the southern boundaries of Kurdistan to include Kirkuk, the oil-rich city that is home to Kurds, Arabs and Turkomans. For U.S. officials, the nightmare scenario is that the Kurds break away from Iraq altogether—splintering the nation and inciting restive Kurdish minorities in such neighboring countries as Iran, Syria and especially Turkey, which has threatened to intervene to prevent the establishment of an independent Kurdish state.

In his interview with TIME, Talabani played down the possibility of Kurdish secession. "If you asked the Kurds, 'Do you want independence?' of course everyone will say yes," he said. "But if you ask, 'Do you want independence now?' the answer would be no." A U.S. official says Talabani, a former lawyer with close ties to Washington, "knows how far he can push, and he's not likely to push further than that, even if a lot of Kurds want him to."

There's little dispute that the results of the Jan. 30 election have given Kurdish nationalism fresh momentum. Although they are predominantly Muslim, the Kurds of Iraq have long favored a more secular form of government than most Shi'ites do. The Kurdistan Referendum Movement, a grass-roots organization of intellectuals and junior political officials, says that of the 2 million who took part in an informal Election Day referendum on independence, 99% voted in favor. Kurds control their peshmerga militia soldiers and their own borders and are determined to preserve their sanctuary. Officially, Kurdistan exists only north of the "green line," the area where U.S. forces halted the Iraqi army's advance when Saddam moved to crush yet another Kurdish uprising in 1991. But since the fall of Saddam in 2003, the size of Kurdish-held territory has expanded 20%, according to coalition officials in northern Iraq.

Kurdish leaders are pushing to gain control of Kirkuk—known as the Jerusalem of Kurdistan—the capital of one of Iraq's most productive oil regions. Under Saddam, Kirkuk was subjected to a massive demographic reordering, as Saddam moved large numbers of Arabs into the city and tossed many Kurds out. The interim Iraqi government headed by Prime Minister Iyad Allawi agreed that Kirkuk should be normalized—meaning displaced Kurds would be allowed to return while the so-called new Arabs would be moved out and compensated. But though some 100,000 Kurdish refugees returned to Kirkuk in time to vote in the election, the Iraqi government has yet to begin deporting the new Arabs.

For U.S. commanders in Iraq, an even more pressing concern is the status of the 80,000-strong peshmerga. In insurgent hot spots like Mosul, U.S. commanders have praised Kurdish troops for their willingness to stand and fight. But the peshmerga's continued assaults on insurgents run the risk of exacerbating tribal rivalries and sparking an anti-Kurdish backlash by Iraq's Arabs. The U.S. hopes to defuse the potential for conflict by folding the peshmerga into a new, unified Iraqi army. But the Kurds have so far refused to place their soldiers under the command of Baghdad. "The peshmerga must remain a force of the regional government," says Talabani, a former peshmerga commander. "The Kurdish people need them as protection against terrorism and to secure the boundaries of Iraqi Kurdistan." The Kurds may be willing to cede control of their militia in exchange for assurances that they will be given a large role in the new government and a share of oil revenues from the south. "The more they participate in the central government, the less fear they'll have that they're going to be attacked," says Phebe Marr, an Iraq expert at the U.S. Institute of Peace. Some Iraqis hope that Talabani's ascent to the presidency will be seen as an important first step toward Kurds and Arabs living peacefully with each other. "For years, we've been told that Kurds are Iraqis and not a separate people," says Hoshyar Zebari, a Kurd who is Iraq's interim Foreign Minister.

"Well, this is a chance to prove that—a chance to show that no position in the new Iraq, not even the presidency, is denied to a Kurd."

— With reporting by Aparisim Ghosh/ Baghdad and Timothy J. Burger and Mark Thompson/ Washington

From the Mar. 07, 2005 issue of TIME magazine

7. - RFE/RL - "Iraq: Kurds Increase Pressure For Federation":

Iraqi Kurds are stepping up pressure for the country to become a federation in the wake of their strong showing in the January elections. The Kurds now are the second largest bloc in Iraq's National Assembly and have emerged as the swing-vote that both contenders for prime minister are courting.

PRAGUE / 25 February 2005 / by Charles Recknagel

Iraqi Kurds are feeling their strength after gaining the second largest bloc of seats in the new National Assembly.

The Kurds' 75 seats make them the party to court for the two men vying to be Iraq's next prime minister. Those men are Ibrahim al-Ja’fari, a Shi'a Islamist, and his rival, Iyad Allawi, a secular Shi'a who currently holds the post.

The Kurds are demanding that one of their own leaders get the influential, if largely ceremonial role of president in the new Iraqi government."It is the right of the Kurdish people to demand that the region of Kurdistan, as it is known in terms of geography and history, become the region over which the Kurdish people would exert their federal rule. We believe that existing problems can also be solved by consensus and dialogue in a brotherly, political way. There is no problem in Iraq that would be insolvable, in our opinion."

The Kurdish candidate is Jalal Talabani, head of one of the two most important Kurdish factions, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. They have made it clear over the past days that they not only want Talabani to be head of state as their price for supporting either of the rival candidates for prime minister, but they also will insist on a federal Iraq.

Speaking with RFE/RL's Radio Free Iraq on 24 February, Talabani said: "It is the right of the Kurdish people to demand that the region of Kurdistan, as it is known in terms of geography and history, become the region over which the Kurdish people would exert their federal rule. We believe that existing problems can also be solved by consensus and dialogue in a brotherly, political way. There is no problem in Iraq that would be insolvable, in our opinion."

Both the rival candidates to be head of government are negotiating for Kurdish support because neither has the two-thirds majority that is effectively needed in the 275-seat assembly to get the position.

Al-Ja’fari is closest to the mark because he is the candidate of the United Iraqi Alliance, a largely Shi'a coalition endorsed by preeminent cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. The Alliance has 140 seats. Those seats plus the Kurds' 75 seats would give it the support of 215 delegates, well over the two-thirds majority, which is 184 seats.

Allawi is starting with just the 40 seats he won in the elections. Still, if he could add the Kurds' 75 seats he would get a big boost and he still could pick up other votes from smaller parties in the assembly.

Allawi might also hope to lure away some of the members of al-Ja’fari's own loose coalition, which includes secular and Islamist groups. In an opening shot this week, Allawi called al-Ja’fari "an honorable man" but said Iraq should be liberal and not "governed by political Islamists."

So far, the Kurds have given no clear sign of who they will ultimately favor.

Abdul Jalil Faily, the head of the Baghdad bureau of the other largest Kurdish faction, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), explained the unified Kurdish position in an interview with Radio Free Iraq on 23 February. "When it comes to the nomination of [Ibrahim] al-Ja’fari for the post of prime minister we have, in fact, no negative points to mention," Faily said. "But our support or nonsupport for him depends on the extent of the support of the mentioned person to our cause, as a Kurdish cause."

The Kurds want to keep the substantial autonomy they currently enjoy in Kurdish-administered northern Iraq and institutionalize those powers through a constitution that establishes Iraq as a federation.

If al-Ja’fari were to become prime minister he would have to decide how strong he wants the Baghdad government to be and whether to resist or encourage the decentralization of powers that the Kurds want. Those include the powers now exercised by the Kurdish leadership, which collects taxes in its region and maintains its own security forces.

Much of Kurdish-populated northern Iraq fell out of Baghdad's control under Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in the wake of the 1991 Gulf War. However, Kurdish officials say they respect Iraq's territorial integrity and want the Kurdish region to remain in Iraq within a federal system.

Allawi has already publicly endorsed the Kurds' demands for a federal system, explaining his position after a meeting on 10 February 10 with KDP head Mas’ud Barzani: "There were talks about the necessity of political consensus between different Iraqi [political] forces to cement the civilizing and positive basis for a unified, democratic, federal future of Iraq, which includes all different segments of Iraqi society."

The Kurdish leadership, which is secular, could feel ideologically closer to Allawi and his appeals for a "liberal" Iraq than to the Shi'a religious parties that make up al-Ja’fari's strongest base of support.

Al-Ja’fari has indicated he might push for a "more Islamist" Iraq by recently restating that the religious parties want Islamic law, or Shari’a, to be a source, among others, for Iraq's legal code. He added that "we will not have any laws that oppose Islam" -- that is, contradict its values.

But with the Kurds holding meetings with both rival prime minister candidates' camps, it is too early to predict how the negotiations will end or what compromises might be reached.

One particularly thorny issue for all sides is the widespread Kurdish desire to bring the oil-rich region of Kirkuk into the Kurdish-administered area. The city is populated by Kurds, who favor the move, but also Turkomans and Arabs who do not.

Any inclusion of Kirkuk into the Kurdish-administered region would be opposed by Turkey. Ankara says it fears for the rights of the Turkomans, who are linguistically and culturally related to the Turks, under a Kurdish administration. Turkey also claims that any further strengthening of the Kurdish autonomous area could lead to Iraq's Kurds declaring independence -- something Ankara says might encourage its own restive Kurdish minority to try the same.

With no end to Iraq's political jockeying yet in sight, the best description of talks this week may belong to Kurdish politician Barham Salih.

Salih, deputy prime minister in the current Iraqi interim government, told “The Washington Post” ahead of Kurdish talks with al-Ja’fari's camp that "I can imagine they will be exhaustive, and exhausting, negotiations."

8. - The New York Times - "Kurds demanding to keep their army in any future Iraq":

ARAI SUBHAN AGHA / 23 February 2005 / by Edward Wong

The camouflage-clad militiamen marched down from the mountains in four columns of hundreds each, stomping their boots in unison.

"Keep looking forward!" an officer yelled.

"Kurdistan or death!" the soldiers shouted at once, their words thundering over the sound of heels striking the ground.

Here at a training camp in the eastern hills of Iraqi Kurdistan, there is little doubt about to whom these soldiers owe their allegiance.

Many say their first loyalty lies with a major Kurdish political party. Then they offer it to Kurdistan, the rugged autonomous region in northern Iraq the size of Switzerland. There is little mention of the nation of Iraq or the Iraqi Army.

"All of the pesh merga of Kurdistan, we’re fighting for Kurdistan," one of the soldiers, Fermen Ibrahim, 25, told a visitor, calling the militia by its Kurdish name, which means "those who face death."

As political jockeying rages in Baghdad to determine the shape of the new government - how Islamic it will be, whether it has strong or weak central powers - one of the most troublesome issues emerging is whether political parties, especially those of the Kurds and Shiites, can keep their private armies. Kurdish leaders say they intend to write into the new constitution a system granting considerable powers to individual regions, one that will legitimize their use of the pesh merga.

If the Kurds succeed, they will achieve the right of regional powers to set up their own armies, possibly leading to warlord-style fiefs across Iraq. Until their strong showing in the recent national elections, Kurdish leaders appeared to agree, at least in public, with the American goal of dismantling militias. Now they stand in open defiance of it.

The pesh merga, with recruits from two Kurdish parties, total about 100,000 soldiers. A source of ethnic pride, they fought tenaciously against Saddam Hussein and are now relied upon by American commanders to battle the Arab-led insurgency in the north. Perhaps most important in the current power vacuum, they provide Kurdish leaders with armed backing in their demands for broad autonomy.

"We want to keep our pesh merga because they are a symbol of resistance," said Massoud Barzani, the leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the son of Mustafa Barzani, a revered Kurdish leader who founded the pesh merga in the 1960’s. "It’s not a matter to be discussed or negotiated."

If the Kurds get the constitution they want, the pesh merga would nominally fall under the oversight of the Ministry of Defense in Baghdad, Kurdish officials say, but in reality would be controlled by regional commanders. The two Kurdish parties each have a ministry of pesh merga, which they say they intend to keep.

The Kurds also say the pesh merga will maintain all the trappings of a conventional army, with an officers’ college, training camps and armor and artillery units all operating independently of the rest of the Iraqi security forces.

The major Shiite parties, who have the largest share of seats in the constitutional assembly, may try to block the Kurds on the militia issue to limit the autonomy of the Kurds. But those parties have significant militias that they may seek to keep, or to at least incorporate into the Iraqi security forces as intact units. Their armies generally stay hidden on the streets of Baghdad but have been active in the Shiite heartland of the south, operating checkpoints and patrols and, in some cases, enforcing strict Islamic law, like cracking down on alcohol vendors.

The leaders of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a powerful Shiite party, have repeatedly said that the party’s Iranian-trained armed wing, the Badr Organization, at least 15,000 strong, can help provide security in the new Iraq.

The former governing Sunni Arabs, a minority now feeling threatened by the other groups, will probably oppose any move by the Kurds and Shiites to legitimize their militias.

American commanders publicly say that all armed groups in Iraq must be state sponsored and that militarized units should not be organized by ethnicity or sect. But they privately acknowledge the extreme difficulties of breaking up the militias. Lt. Col. Eric Durr, the head of civil affairs for the 42nd Infantry Division, charged with overseeing eastern Kurdistan, said it was now up to the new Iraqi government to figure out what to do with the militias.

"It’s really a political issue for the Iraqi government to work out," he said.

The Americans are relying on the pesh merga to fight insurgents. Across the north, particularly in the besieged city of Mosul, American commanders have supported Iraqi officials in deploying large units of armed Kurds into the streets.

But the pesh merga also exemplify the pitfalls of private armies - in the mid-1990’s, the militias of the two Kurdish parties turned their guns on each other in a civil war that left at least 3,000 dead.

"What I see happening now in Iraq is the potential drift toward warlordism," said Larry Diamond, a former adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority, which tried but failed to disband militias before handing sovereignty to the Iraqis last June.

"If things go bad," he added, "if the center does not hold, if ethnic and regional divisions are not well and carefully managed by the country’s political leaders, particularly at the center, then the existence of all these militias - both those preceding the handover of power and those that have arisen in recent months - could facilitate the descent of the country into some kind of Lebanon-style civil war."

The presence of the pesh merga "is bound to strengthen the resolve of Kurdish political leaders not to yield on their demands for far-reaching autonomy," said Mr. Diamond, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

The pesh merga are everywhere in Iraqi Kurdistan - along the highways, atop government buildings, riding in convoys. They wear a hodgepodge of uniforms, from traditional baggy outfits to desert camouflage hand-me-downs from the United States Army. There is one thing that appears to be consistent, though: they think of themselves as Kurds first and Iraqis second.

"If I work hard to protect my people and my cities, indirectly I’ll serve Iraq," Col. Mehdi Dosky, 44, the commander of the training camp here, said as he sat behind his desk in a dark green Iraqi Army uniform. Two officers on a couch pored over evaluation forms of the trainees. A map on one wall showed the theoretical pan-Kurdish nation that Kurds in the Middle East hope to carve out one day - a huge territory stretching from the Mediterranean to western Iran and taking in large parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran.

"We don’t think it’s a good idea to disband our army," said Colonel Dosky, whose father served as a pesh merga from the militia’s first days. "We want to keep our forces and have them protect our region. The Kurds will protect their area, and other people will use their forces to protect their own areas. There are too many ethnic and religious problems right now in Iraq."

The American dependence on such proxy armies is clearest in Mosul, where Kurds make up nearly a quarter of the population. In November, Sunni Arab rebels overran police stations and forced thousands of officers to quit, and the Arab governor requested the aid of two Kurdish battalions of the Iraqi National Guard.

Brig. Gen. Carter Ham, the head of Task Force Olympia, the American force which until last week was charged with controlling Mosul, used Kurds to guard his headquarters.

But the presence of an ethnic or sect-based militia in a diverse city can quickly inflame tensions.

Such is the case in Kirkuk, the oil-rich city where Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen uneasily live side by side. At the request of Arabs and Turkmen, the American military asked pesh merga to leave the city after Mr. Hussein fell. Last summer, Kurdish officials said, the Americans allowed 300 pesh merga to return temporarily to fight insurgents.

"Always, it’s a sensitive issue," said Suphi Sabir, a senior official in the Iraqi Turkmen Front, the most prominent Turkmen party in Kirkuk. "But we won’t start a fight over it because the result would be very bad."

Warzer Jaff contributed reporting from Mosul, Iraq, for this article.