Courcy’s Intelligence Brief

Turkey and the United States have staked a lot on an alliance with Masoud Barzani, the leader of Iraqi Kurdistan.  But the developments in Syria’s Kurdish region and Turkey’s failure to solve its own Kurdish problem are putting strains on the strategy.  Barzani's alignment with Ankara is based primarily on economic self-interest, and although substantial that does have its limitations.  In recent days, Iran has also issued a reminder that it has a role to play in Kurdish politics.

Turkey has reached four conclusions about the position of the Syrian Kurds.  They are that:

1.  The advances made in northern Syria by the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) will lead to the creation of an autonomous entity analogous to Iraqi Kurdistan and which will form links with the Iraqi enclave.

2.  The PYD is subordinate to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) guerrilla group in Turkey.

3.  Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad has intentionally ceded control of Syria’s Kurdish region to the PYD.

4.  These developments are supported by Masoud Barzani, the leader of Iraqi Kurdistan, who has until recently been considered favourably by Ankara.

It is this last point which is of most significance.  For Turkey, maintaining good relations with Barzani has been seen to be the key to controlling the Kurdish question since the time of Prime Minister (and later President) Turgut Ozal in the 1980s and 90s.  The concept behind Turkish support for Barzani was to give the Kurds an alternative to the PKK and to prevent Barzani making common cause with the PKK against Turkey.  More recently, support for Barzani has provided Ankara a way of exerting influence over the pro-Iran Shia government in Baghdad led by Nuri al-Maliki.

Turkey’s part of the bargain is to offer land-locked but oil-rich Iraqi Kurdistan access to world markets without going through territory controlled by Baghdad.  Enabling the Iraqi Kurds to exploit their own oil resources in this way would enfranchise and enrich the Kurds, but it would also give Turkey a warranty for the good behaviour of the Iraqi Kurds.

In theory, it is a perfect scenario, and judging by the behaviour of the US oil giants it is clearly one that has full US approval.

It is thought that Iraqi Kurdistan could produce 1m barrels per day (bpd) by 2014 and 2m bpd by 2019, which would be more than Libya.  Theoretically, the central government in Baghdad has jurisdiction over all oil exports, including from Iraqi Kurdistan.  In return it gives the Kurdish region 17% of the country’s oil revenue.  But Iraqi Kurdistan’s proven oil reserves of 45m barrels amount to more than one-third of the Iraqi total, and the Kurds want a bigger share of the spoils and more control.

In pursuit of its goals, Iraqi Kurdistan has been trying to reach deals with the world’s oil majors without recourse to Baghdad.  The key indicator about US thinking came in November 2011 when Exxon Mobil signed a deal for six exploration blocks, in contrast to Royal Dutch Shell which had rejected a similar deal four years earlier.  Then in July this year, the US number-two oil giant, Chevron, bought 80% of two blocks from India’s Reliance.  Others, such as France’s Total, sensing the way the wind is blowing, are following suit.

The oil companies say that their real motivation is the terms on offer from the Kurds, said to comprise 25%-35% in production-sharing contracts compared with 15%-18% on offer from Baghdad in the south of Iraq.  But that the cascade of interest is linked to hopes of a deal between Iraqi Kurdistan and Turkey over access to markets cannot be doubted.  In May, the Kurdish regional government announced a plan to build a pipeline from the Taq Taq oilfield to join the existing pipeline from Kirkuk in Iraq to Ceyhan on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey.

But now Barzani has angered Turkey with his manoeuvrings in Syria in support of the PKK-linked PYD.  As we said in last week’s issue, Barzani seems determined to wield as much influence as he can over the Syrian Kurds and cannot be seen to be bowing to Turkish pressure.  On the other hand, Turkey offers Barzani his escape route from the clutches of Baghdad, and that would appear to be a policy that is favoured by the United States.

The US-Turkey policy makes strategic sense.  From the US point of view it weakens the pro-Iran Shia ascendancy in Iraq; from Turkey’s point of view it gives it substantial leverage over the most-important Kurdish entity.  The weakness in the policy is the fact that Turkey has done so little to solve its own Kurdish problem, and when it comes to the Kurdish question, the Turkish Kurds cannot be sidelined.

Turkey is home to around half of the region’s Kurds, and Kurds make up about 20% of Turkey’s population.  This will be a continuing source of potential difficulty for Turkey’s relations with Barzani.  As one Turkish commentator put it this week: “Unless it [Turkey] changes its approach towards its own Kurds, neither its relations with the Syrians nor with the Iraqi Kurds, including Barzani, will stay free of problems."

This Turkish failure in turn allows the PKK to flourish and to exploit whatever opportunities the collapse of Syria may bring.  For instance, on 4 August there were simultaneous attacks by the PKK on four Turkish military outposts in the south-eastern province of Hakkari.  Six soldiers and two village guards were killed, along with 14 guerrillas.  After the attack Turkey warned that it would be prepared to launch military operations against the PKK in Syria, as it does regularly in northern Iraq.  Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said: “Who knows that we will not do it?  Our three military units are performing exercises on the [Turkey-Syria] border.”

It was later announced that nearly 130 PKK guerrillas had been killed in Hakkari in the heaviest clashes between Turkish security forces and the PKK in years.

Finally, there is the Iran factor.  Iran, as stated, is close to the al-Maliki regime in Baghdad.  It is also close to Barzani’s great Kurdish rival, Jalal Talabani, leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and current president of Iraq.  The PUK and Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) have a long history of internecine strife going back to the 1970s, and each party maintains total autonomy in their respective areas of control in Kurdistan: the KDP in Arbil and Duhok and the PUK in Sulaymaniyah.  In addition, the PUK inclines towards Iran which, amongst other things, is the second-biggest investor in Kurdistan.

With this Iranian linkage to the Kurds, Ankara will be taking seriously this week’s warning to Turkey from Iran’s Chief of General Staff Hasan Firuzabadi that Turkey may be “next in line” for Arab Spring-style violence.  Quoted by the Dogan news agency on 7 August, Firuzabadi said that Turkey, following the lead of the Western powers and in cahoots with Saudi Arabia, was responsible for the fighting in Syria.

Firuzabadi then warned: “If these countries continue with their existing approach to Syria, they should know that Turkey and the others will be next in line.”  The warning is a powerful reminder that however strategically clever the US-Turkey policy on Kurdistan may be, there are large elements beyond their control that could yet wreck their plans.  Barzani is caught in the middle, and his actions over the coming weeks and months could be crucial.  JdeC.