The Kurdish Moon Landing

The subtext of much of the reporting from the recent Abant Platform in Arbil in the Kurdish north of Iraq (including my own previous column) has been of the man-lands-on-moon variety.

The chief accomplishment of the meeting was that it was one small step for Kurdish and Turkishkind; its importance was not so much its content as the fact that it happened at all. Yet even subtexts have subtexts, and in this case they took the form of two well-upholstered elephants in the room.

The first was that the meeting was taking place at a time when America is moving heaven and earth to skedaddle out of Iraq. Iraqi Kurds were among the most welcoming of the American invasion in the first place. It was America's first war with Baghdad in 1991 which, of course, gave the Kurdish political parties the chance to sling their Kalashnikovs over their shoulders and descend from the mountains into the job of running a relatively autonomous region. And, of course, it was Turkey who most opposed the 2003 war, precisely because it feared it would lead to the break up Iraq. Now it is Turkey which is most anxious about the American departure (for the same old reason that they fear it will hasten the breakup of Iraq). The Iraqi Kurds are more ambivalent. They fear they have paid the price for their own relative stability and resent that America has lavished more of its attention (and spending) to pacify the Arab rest of the country.

Those attending the conference in Arbil were not state representatives. Officialdom (including parliamentarians) stayed away. Another imbalance was that there were remarkably few women either from Turkey or Iraqi Kurdistan. In any discussion of the "common search for a peaceful future," women must have a role. Yet Elephant No. 2 was that the meeting could take place on Iraqi Kurdish soil whereas a similar meeting scheduled to take place in Diyarbakir had to be canceled. Kurdish nationalists from Turkey did not turn up.

It was Cengiz Çandar, one of the Turkish press's old Middle East hands, who underlined at the end of the meeting what might in other circumstances have been its starting point - that the current Iraqi-Turkish border is one of the Near East's most artificial frontiers and that far from being like a trip to the moon, going to Arbil should be like crossing the road. The poetess Bejan Matur described with extraordinary eloquence the emotional web which connected people from the Southeast of Turkey to those in Iraqi Kurdistan. Both speakers managed to stand the Turkish fear of irredentism on its head. The prosperity and autonomy of Iraqi Kurds will not encourage separatism in Turkey so much as render the whole discussion obsolete. Trade and cultural commerce are better than diplomatic envoys. That said, one of the more concrete proposals of the meeting was that it was high time for Turkey to establish a consulate in the Kurdistan regional government area, and that with the Americans trying to leave, it would be wrong to leave the field entirely to Iran.

Of course, this all sounds simple but depends on a sense of trust and normalcy - items that have been traditionally missing in the Turkish-Kurdish dialogue. It is important for Iraqi Kurds to understand that Turkey is beginning to question its own past and to understand that sustaining a sense of Kurdish threat was part and parcel of the Ergenekon strategy. Turkey, too, must understand that Iraqi Kurdistan, too, is dipping its toe in reform.

The most startling piece of news is that the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) is in the process of implosion, partly as a reaction to Jalal Talabani's age and largely as a revolt against systemic corruption. A new grouping led by the much-respected Nawshirwan Mustafa, the dinner party gossip has it, stands a good chance of taking the PUK stronghold of Sulaimaniya if elections go ahead this May.

At the same time, Kurdish relations with Baghdad, never sweet, are beginning to curdle. Prime Minster Nouri al-Maliki's recent electoral success is regarded by much of the outside world as providing stability that has been achieved by drumming the old anti-Kurdish drum. A change of regulations has made it unclear whether foreigners entering the country through the Arbil airport have the right to use that same passport stamp to travel outside the Kurdish regions. There is a fear that it may not be the Kurds who undermine the unity of Iraq but Baghdad itself.