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http://asia.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/meast/10/05/kurds.turkey.reut/index.html [Turkey, with the second largest contingent of troops assigned to NATO, after the US, has a permanent - illegal - military presence inside the sovereign nation of Iraq, at times invading the north of that country with as many as 10,000 troops. Now it's prime minister takes up cudgels in defense of Iraqi national sovereigny and territorial integrity. The same terminology employed almost daily for several months now by the US White House and State Department as well as by NATO Headquarters in Brussels in relation to Georgia, whose entire military is being trained and remade by the US both at home and in the US itself. To protect its national sovereignty presumably. But then Georgia is a key US and Turkish military client state and the Georgian military is being 'denationalized' and deployed to guard the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline which will bring Caspian oil into all of Europe. There's national sovereignty and there's national sovereignty after all. Should Iraq attempt to defend its genuine territorial integrity and encounter Turkish troops on its own soil - or should such an incident be fabricated - NATO could invoke its Article Five mutual defense clause and attack Iraq en masse. Regarding the reference to the 'oil-rich city of Kirkuk' in the following dispatch, Kirkuk and the surrounding area is inhabited by ethnic Kurds, Assyrians and Chaldeans, but Turkey for months has been waging a propaganda campaign to portray the area as being Turkoman, that is, ethnically and lingusitically Turkic, preparatory to eventually establishing an independent Turkomanstan and grabbing the petroleum reserves of Northern Iraq. Yet Ankara, when it comes to the Kurdish question, will not tolerate an independent state in Iraq.] Turkey warns Iraqi Kurds against independence bid -Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit of Turkey, a NATO member with troops already based inside northern Iraq, said his country was watching for signs that the Kurds wanted to breakaway from Iraq. -Washington has also devoted years of diplomacy to overcoming internal Kurdish fighting and making the rugged Kurdish enclave a united bulwark against the Iraqi government. -They also envisage the oil-rich city of Kirkuk -- currently run by the Iraqi government -- as the capital of their region. -The Turkish military already garrisons troops inside northern Iraq.... Sunday, October 6, 2002 Posted: 12:47 AM HKT (1647 GMT) ISTANBUL, Turkey (Reuters) -- Turkey warned Iraq's Kurds on Saturday not to use U.S. support for their newly-reopened regional parliament as a licence to declare a separate state. The Iraqi Kurds reopened their parliament on Friday, aiming to put years of feuding behind them and stake a claim for autonomy if the United States ousts Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, allegedly for seeking weapons of mass destruction. Turkey, a close U.S. ally, sees a separate Kurdish state in Iraq as a disaster that would threaten its borders and encourage its own estimated 12 million Kurds to make a bid for independence. Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit of Turkey, a NATO member with troops already based inside northern Iraq, said his country was watching for signs that the Kurds wanted to breakaway from Iraq. "We will never allow it (the parliament) to give the image of the parliament of a state," Ecevit said in televised remarks. "We are continually watching. If it goes further down that road, Turkey will take the necessary measures," he said. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell sent a message of support to the parliament. The United States has protected the Kurds of northern Iraq with air patrols based in Turkey since they revolted against Baghdad after the 1991 Gulf War. Washington has also devoted years of diplomacy to overcoming internal Kurdish fighting and making the rugged Kurdish enclave a united bulwark against the Iraqi government. Ecevit said Powell's message should not be seen as U.S. approval of a separate Kurdish state. "I don't know what the aim of sending such a message was. But if it was to set up a separate state we would not welcome it or see it as a friendly gesture. But I doubt it had that aim." The two Kurdish parties that run northern Iraq have proposed a draft constitution for a post-Saddam era that sees their region having wide autonomy under a federal system. They also envisage the oil-rich city of Kirkuk -- currently run by the Iraqi government -- as the capital of their region. Ecevit said such moves alarmed Turkey, which fears the assembly wants to be "not the parliament of a local authority but the parliament of a state." Kurds live in a swathe of territory encompassing parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran and have never had their own state. Uprisings against their governments often end in bloody failure. "The establishment of an independent state right next to our border is not something we can accept. But we will announce the measures that we may have to take on this clearly when the time comes," Ecevit said. Turkey has fought separatist Kurdish rebels since 1984 in a conflict that has killed more than 30,000 people, most of them guerrillas. The Turkish military already garrisons troops inside northern Iraq, mainly to crack down on rebels that use the region as a base. __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? 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