TURKEY: Turkey's cabinet set to approve economic sanctions for northern Iraq

Turkey's cabinet is due to approve economic sanctions expected to include restricting border traffic and reducing electricity exports to northern Iraq. Turkey's cabinet is due to approve economic sanctions on Wednesday (October 31) against groups deemed to be providing support to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The measures are expected to include restricting border traffic and reducing electricity exports to northern Iraq, a move widely viewed as targeting Iraqi Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani's administration. A large percentage of trade done with Iraq goes through the Habur Gate Crossing near the city of Sirnak, and local residents fear this will one of the first to be closed by sanctions. "If the Habur border gate does not work with the exception of government officials, the rest will starve to death," said Mehmet Akay, a Cizre resident. In Silopi, the closest town to the Border gate, Sirnak Trade and Industry Chamber official Rezzan Acar, said that traffic through the gate has already decreased due to the heightened tension. "As the locals in the region, our economic balance will be totally ruined. Since the rumour about the operation began, a month and a half ago, the economic volume has fallen by 75 percent already. There used to be 2500 trucks going in and out of Iraq. Now the amount is below 1000 and if it continues this amount will be zero in the next few days". Turkey has massed up to 100,000 troops along the Iraqi border in preparation for a possible cross-border incursion to root out an estimated 3,000 PKK rebels. At the border trucks waited in long queues to cross to Iraq. "Our only source of income is the Habur Border Gate. If it's closed we will go back to our village and do nothing," said Yusuf Aslan, a truck driver on his way to Iraq's northern border. On Tuesday (October 30), Iraqi Kurdish leader Barzani criticised Turkey for refusing to discuss the issue directly with his autonomous Kurdish administration in northern Iraq. Ankara insists on speaking only with the central government in Baghdad and suspects Barzani of planning an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq. Turkey fears this could stoke separatism among Turkey's own large Kurdish population. Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan told reporters a reception at the presidential palace in Ankara on Tuesday (October 30) that his government would not deal with Barzani because he was guilty of "sheltering a terrorist organisation" in that region. Turkey's civil aviation authority has denied Istanbul-based charter airline Tarhan Tower permission to fly two of its three weekly flights to Arbil this week, airline officials told Reuters on Tuesday, in an apparent sign of new restrictions. In a reconciliatory move, Iraqi authorities who has been seen as slow to act, have set up more checkpoints to restrict the movement of Kurdish rebel fighters and cut supply lines to their mountain hideouts, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said on Wednesday. Zebari also said after a meeting with his Iranian counterpart that "intensive efforts" were under way to secure the release of eight Turkish soldiers seized by the PKK rebels in an attack earlier this month. Ankara blames the PKK for the deaths of more than 30,000 people since the group launched its armed campaign for an ethnic homeland in southeast Turkey in 1984 and has urged Iraq to clamp down on the separatist guerrillas. The United States and the European Union, like Turkey, brand the PKK as a terrorist group. U.S., Turkish and Iraqi officials will make diplomatic efforts to avert a major military operation at a conference of Iraq's neighbours in Istanbul this weekend.

ITN Source | October 31, 2007

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