Word: kurds
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...Ever since the U.S. invasion of Iraq, observers have viewed Kirkuk, which is coveted by Kurds, Turkomans and Arabs, as a potential trip wire for civil war. The fact that it has remained largely stable owes much to the cosmopolitan character of the city's native population, and the city's heroic local police force led by three generals - a Kurd, an Arab and a Turkoman. The relative calm in Kirkuk may also be a vindication of the Baghdad government's foot-dragging over the question of whether to turn Kirkuk over to Kurdish control. (See pictures of Iraq...
...other security challenges become more manageable, the Arab-Kurd fault line in Kirkuk has become increasingly dangerous. Such is the enmity between the two leaders that al-Maliki and Kurdish Regional Government President Masoud Barzani rarely speak to each other. Iraqi troops and the Kurdish Pesh Merga have clashed several times in disputed areas in recent months, forcing U.S. officers to mediate to avoid escalation...
...Iraq's Arab-Kurd political conflict also directly affects oil investment in the three semi-autonomous Kurdish provinces in the North. Since 2006 the Kurdistan Regional Government has signed about 20 deals with small oil companies, and have begun exporting oil during the past year - the only new oil fields developed in Iraq in decades -. That violated the Iraqi government's decrees that such contracts, which bypassed Baghdad, are illegal...
...Turkey will need to deal with its Kurdish problem, including ending hostilities with a militant group, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), who have about 3,000 guerrillas based in the mountains of northern Iraq. Turkish officials seem to recognize this. A trilateral commission of Iraqi Kurd, Turkish and U.S. officials meets regularly to discuss a possible PKK amnesty. Other measures on the agenda in Ankara include restoring Kurdish place-names and cleaning up the jingoistic billboards that litter the southeast. What's really needed is a more democratic constitution. But the government has backtracked on that promise before...
...helps that Turkish Kurds now have a role model of their own. Kurdistan is still a taboo word in Turkey, but Turkish Kurds have watched with fascination the developments in neighboring Iraq over the past few years. Iraqi Kurds have built up a largely self-governing region with its own parliament and flag. For the first time in history, the Kurds - an ancient people spread out across Iran, Syria, Turkey and Iraq - have what looks like a state. "The emergence of Kurdistan has fostered a sense of self-confidence here," says Sezgin Tanrikulu, a prominent lawyer in Diyarbakir. "Not because...