müzakere süreci türkiye'nin k.ırak'taki etkisini artıracak-ft

By Daniel Dombey in Istanbul

President Lyndon Baines Johnson used to say he had one great skill – an understanding
of power, “where to look for it and how to use it”. As events this week are likely to
demonstrate, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s prime minister, believes he has the same gift.
Mr Erdogan is on a northern European swing this week, but in the southeast of Turkey
history is on the march. On Thursday, before thousands of celebrants, Leyla Zana, one of the
icons of the Kurdish movement, is due to read out a message proclaiming a ceasefire in a
conflict that has killed 35,000 people over three decades and a road map for the months
ahead.
The road map was drawn up by Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan
Workers Party, or PKK, an organisation the US, the EU and Turkey itself classify as
terrorist. The plan has already received the green light from the pro-Kurdish party in
parliament, the PKK’s wing in western Europe and the military arm in its redoubt in the
northern Iraqi mountains. More importantly, the plan is being issued following extensive
contacts – what anyone would normally call negotiations – with Mr Erdogan’s own
government.
It is here that Mr Erdogan sees his Johnsonian opportunity to find and use power. If all goes
to plan – a fairly heroic assumption but a real possibility nonetheless – the events in
Diyarbakir, the self-styled Kurdish capital of Turkey, will turn the country’s internal and
external politics inside out.
Turkey’s geopolitical position has been transformed in the past couple of years, as the Arab
revolutions have rocked the region. Once a country intent on having zero problems with its
neighbours, the Sunni-majority state now finds itself in bitter rivalry with the Shia- (and
Alawite-) led central governments of Iran, Iraq and Syria.
In this context, achieving peace at home and removing a strategic point of vulnerability
becomes all the more imperative and an old Turkish dream has reappeared. That is the
ambition to extend Turkish sway – in de facto terms at least – into the oil and gas-rich lands
of Kurdish Northern Iraq, a mouthwatering goal at a time when Turkey pays Russia some
$2bn a month for fuel and when Ankara’s energy needs are increasing all the time.
A deal with Turkey’s own Kurdish minority, in which the Kurdish language is used in schools
and courts and local government is enhanced, could further propel the process while
reducing the risk that the ever greater autonomy of neighbouring northern Iraq would boost
separatist demands in Turkey itself.
Already about one out of every two foreign businesses in the north of Iraq is Turkish-owned,
but the economic interdependence between Turkey and the region could go much further.
Ankara has been negotiating a large-scale deal in which state-owned companies could take
big stakes in the oil and gasfields in the region, despite furious objections by Baghdad and
warnings from the US.
Peace with the PKK could also eliminate another weak spot. Ankara is painfully aware that a
PKK affiliate has established a strong presence in the border lands of Syria: that may be all
the more reason for coming to an agreement with the mother organisation.
Then there is the situation at home. Mr Erdogan has already suggested and Mr Ocalan
accepted a virtual quid pro quo in which Kurdish linguistic and political rights would be
accepted in return for a new constitution creating a powerful new presidency – which Mr
Erdogan himself is all but certain to occupy.
Old alliances are being undone. Mr Erdogan had already been at odds with one leading actor
in Turkish life that previously provided support – the movement of Fethullah Gulen, a
Pennsylvania-based preacher, whose followers are present throughout Turkish life, running
the country’s biggest newspaper and its most numerous business organisation and
championing politically charged mass trials.
The Kurdish talks increase tensions still further. Many Gulenists are aghast at the
negotiations with Mr Ocalan, a particular enemy of their movement, which the PKK chief
calls “counter-guerrillas”.
These are not the misgivings of a marginal group. The columnist Kadri Gursel says there are
three main actors in Turkish politics today – the prime minister, the prisoner and the
preacher.
The realignment of these forces is a momentous one. But although the Kurdish peace process
has many obstacles ahead – winning around Turkish nationalist opinion for one – it is but a
part of an outsize ambition that might have impressed even LBJ