IRAQ: A Kurdish human rights lawyer has warned that a US-led war against Iraq would have devastating consequences for Kurdish minorities in the country's northern region.
Mr Kerim Yeldiz, a former Amnesty International prisoner of conscience and director of the Kurdish Human Rights Project in London, has also said that a war in Iraq could exacerbate existing tensions between Turkey and its Kurdish minority. Mr Yeldiz was in Galway at the weekend to mark the publication of a report on the controversial Ilisu dam project in the Kurdish region of Turkey.
Turkey used the last Gulf War as a "cover" to wipe out Kurdish peoples in the south of the country, and its policy has not changed, Mr Yeldiz said. Kurdish minorities in Iraq would also be the first to suffer if the Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, used chemical weapons in any conflict, he said.
Iraqi Kurds are seeking autonomy for their part of northern Iraq, which includes the oil city of Kirkuk. Turkey has reacted angrily to any bid for autonomy, given that this could lead to a demand for self rule from its Kurdish minority. Last year, the Turkish government warned that it would use force to prevent the Kurds from taking over either Kirkuk or Mosul, to which Ankara has Ottoman-era claims.
The Iraqi government has also rejected the federal constitution drawn up by the main Kurdish factions, the Kurdish Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.
Concessions granted to the Kurds by Turkey last summer, as part of its bid for EU membership, are merely "cosmetic", Mr Yeldiz said. The EU would "lose credibility" if it accepted Turkey as a member, given that state's human rights record, and there will never be lasting peace in the region if the Kurdish situation is not fully addressed, he said.
Turkey's handling of the Ilisu dam project is an example of its lack of respect for the Kurdish peoples, Mr Yeldiz said. The report published at the weekend by Ms Maggie Ronayne, lecturer at the Department of Archaeology at NUI, Galway, criticises the Turkish government for failing to carry out any consultations with local people on its plans to build a dam, reservoir and hydro-electric power plant on the river Tigris in the south east of the country.
If the project goes ahead, it could displace up to 78,000 people, the majority of whom are Kurdish, and would deprive communities downstream in Syria and Iraq of water. This would cause environmental pollution and destroy a significant cultural heritage, the report states.
The $2 billion project was to have been constructed by a consortium of European and US companies but three companies have withdrawn under international pressure. Mr Yeldiz said that he learned last week that the Turkish government was still intent on proceeding with the project,and was looking for alternative international funding.
Up to three million people were internally displaced to cities in the Kurdish region of Turkey and to western Turkey as a result of the 15-year war between the Turkish state and the PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party). This resulted in mass infant mortality, lack of food and sanitation, trauma, severe poverty, health, language and cultural problems. The dam project would cause further displacement.
