Some People Want War In North Iraq

By Ilnur Cevik
We are all very happy that the war in Iraq is about to draw to an end with the fall of Tikrit, but we are also rather concerned that there are still some people with ulterior motives who want a bloodbath in northern Iraq.
It seems those who are involved in a series of provocations these days do not appreciate that there would be a "no win" situation if there was serious conflict in the region where Kurds, Turkomans and even Turkey would lose.
The day the peshmerga forces of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) entered Kirkuk we started hearing about stories that the Kurds had killed or kidnapped dozens of Turkomans, had ransacked the state offices where land leases and population records are held... As a matter of fact, the next day we saw pictures of some Kurds carrying away documents from these offices on the front pages of Turkish newspapers.
But soon all those were proven wrong. A Turkish military unit of observers reported back from Kirkuk that people had not been massacred or kidnapped and that there were some isolated cases but even then these targeted Kurds and others as much as the Turkomans.
On the destruction of public records, it was clear that this too was disinformation because neither the Kurds nor the Turkomans would gain anything with the preservation or destruction of the current public records in Kirkuk or Mosul, because the information in these documents was all fabricated by the Saddam regime as part of an Arabization campaign. Does anyone in their right mind believe that Saddam Hussein would leave the old records intact which showed a sizeable presence of Turkomans and Kurds in the region? Of course all those records were replaced to show a major Arab presence in these areas. So their destruction or preservation would hardly be harmful to the Turkomans.
As a matter of fact, the Ottoman archives would provide more accurate information of who owns what in these regions than Saddam's records, so there is very little for the Turkomans to complain about. Despite this, we saw some Turkoman representatives who have no communication at all with the region making rather strange claims...
Then there are the latest claims by the PKK terrorist organization, whose spokesmen told the Financial Times that Turkey had secretly asked the PKK to clash with Iraqi Kurds so that this would prompt Turkish intervention. This is not how the Turkish military conducts its affairs and it is also clear that this, too, is a part of a grand disinformation campaign.
All of this is designed to attract Turkish military intervention in northern Iraq with serious consequences. They feel that by doing this they can hurt Turkey, the Turkomans and the Iraqi Kurds... They have to realize that in this day and age means of communication are very advanced and no one can really hide the facts...