BY FIKRET BILA
MILLIYET- Columnist Fikret Bila comments on the situation in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk. A summary of his column is as follows:
Has the security of Kirkuk’s Turkmen been completely ensured? Turkmen leader Hasan Ozmen said it would be difficult to say things were altogether safe, but added that there was less tension compared to the first days after the Iraqis’ capitulation. The Turkmen are trying to protect their lives and property and are also fighting against the political structure which the Iraqi Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (IPUK) is trying to establish in the city.
Ozmen said that Iraqi Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (IPUK) leader Jalal Talabani had drawn up a plan to govern Kirkuk even before it fell and had put this plan into practice when Kurdish peshmerga entered the city. Before the US soldiers arrived, Talabani also appointed a governor and mayor and continued these appointments with a civilian commission which he established after the US soldiers came.
Are there Turkmen on this civilian commission? Are these appointments legal? ‘We don’t have anyone on this commission because it’s part of Talabani’s plan to have his plan accepted and so dominate Kirkuk,’ Ozmen told me. ‘Therefore we’ve rejected the commission and let the US know of our dissatisfaction.’
Ozmen said that when Iraqi Turkmen Front leader Sanan Ahmet Aga met with Gen. Henry Osman, the officer in charge of US troops in northern Iraq, he told Aga that the administration established by Talabani lacked validity.
The Turkmen seem to have been relieved by Gen. Osman’s answers. However, they say that US soldiers’ patrols in Turkmen neighborhoods are insufficient to establish security, so they’re trying to protect themselves.
The Turkmen expect that Ankara will continue to exert pressure on Talabani, and that Barzani, Talabani and the US won’t be allowed to effect a fait accompli in Kirkuk and Mosul.
SOURCE: OFFICE OF THE PRIME MINISTER, DIRECTORATE GENERAL OF PRESS AND INFORMATION