ANKARA - New Turkey Party (YTP) leader and former foreign minister Ismail Cem said on Sunday that the ''the most important danger for Turkey is a clash and war that may erupt between Kurdish tribes and Arabs near the borders of Turkey.''
''Breaking out of such a war leads both sides to the motivation of using Turkey as a logistic base and this causes a development which is similar to the one between Israel-Palestine right beside Turkey,'' said Cem in a private tv programme.
Cem said that nobody should talk much about foreign policy, adding that ''I was uneasy about certain statements regarding the Iraqi issue. First of all, it was told that 'Turkey was drifted to a war.' If we regard ourselves as this weak, then everybody treats us as if we are such a weak country. This is very wrong. I consider very dangerous the statement of 'many young persons can die' and also the statement of 'if we are going to fight, we must be in this fight.' We must be careful about the Iraqi issue. The most important danger for Turkey is a war that may erupt between Kurdish tribes and Arabs right near our borders because these people are our relatives. We have people of Kurdish origin, we have people of Arabic origin.''
When asked if there was a possibility of foundation of a Kurdish state in Northern Iraq, Cem said that ''yes, there is such a possibility. We can't say that there is no such possibility. The state formation there uses very rationally the conflict between the U.S. and Saddam for its interests. The U.S. wants the Northern Iraq to support it if a war is going to break out with Saddam. Our priorities with the U.S. are different. Our priority is continuation of Iraqi territorial integrity, the U.S. priority is toppling of the Saddam regime.''
Cem commented that ''the formation of a federal state system by maintaining the territorial integrity in Iraq won't make Turkey that much uneasy if this system is not involved in anti-Turkey activities.''