Now the Turkish leaders' grave concern has further proved the CIA official's and the other reports previously about the danger of carving Iraq into a few parts under Israel's demand are real.
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Bush Faces Turkish Pressure Over Iraqi Kurds
Sat Jun 26, 2004 07:27 PM ET
By Gareth Jones
ANKARA (Reuters) - President Bush will be pressed by Turkish leaders on Sunday over their fears that Iraq's Kurdish-dominated north might secede and fuel separatism among Kurds in southeast Turkey, diplomats said.
Neighboring Iraq's volatility was underlined on Saturday when Al Jazeera reported that suspected militants, accused by Washington of links to al Qaeda, had threatened to behead three Turks unless Turkish firms and contractors left within 72 hours.
The threat, purportedly from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's Jama'at al Tawhid and Jihad group which has claimed responsibility for beheading an American and a South Korean, is likely to be on the minds of Turkish leaders when they meet Bush.
Bush, who arrived in Ankara on Saturday, will hold talks with Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and President Ahmet Necdet Sezer in the capital before flying to Istanbul, Turkey's biggest city, for a NATO summit on Monday and Tuesday.
Turkey has long been concerned that autonomy for Iraq's five million Kurds -- a driving ambition for Kurdish leaders -- would provoke similar demands from Turkey's own estimated 12 million Kurdish minority.
TURKEY SPELLS OUT IRAQ POLICY
"The division of Iraq should not be allowed," Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said last week as all sides focused on the run-up to the formal U.S. handover to an Iraqi interim government on June 30.
The diplomats said Turkey would demand U.S. forces crack down on Turkish rebel Kurds operating from bases in northern Iraq.
Turkish forces, facing an upsurge in clashes with Kurdish guerrillas in the southeast after the rebels called off a six-year unilateral cease-fire, say some 2,000 Kurdish fighters have crossed into Turkey from hideouts in northern Iraq.
More than 30,000 people were killed during secessionist violence in the 1980s and 1990s, but the fighting largely subsided after the 1999 capture of rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan.
Bush's visit and the NATO summit in Istanbul have prompted unprecedented security in a country that was the target of four huge al Qaeda bomb attacks last year and a rash of small bombings last week blamed on leftist groups. Continued ...
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