"Turkish anxiety on Kirkuk may mean new conflicts
By Meliha Altunisik
Commentary by
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Turkey is interested in the fate of the Kirkuk region of Iraq for three main reasons. First, Turkish policymakers perceive the insistence of Iraqi Kurdish leaders to include the region within the Kurdish Regional Government as a sign of their intention to break away from Iraq. According to this view, Iraqi Kurdish leaders want to incorporate the region due to its oil resources to create an economically viable Kurdish state. This contradicts the Turkish policy of keeping Iraq's territorial integrity intact - a policy Turkey has pursued since the Gulf war of 1991. That policy reflects Turkey's concerns over the instability that the emergence of a Kurdish state would create in the region, especially in Turkey itself. There, it touches on the Kurdish issue via the demonstration effect and irredentism."
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