IRAQI TURKOMAN ALLEGE KURDISH MISRULE AND US BIAS

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 BAGHDAD 003311 SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 10/13/2018 TAGS: PGOV PREL PINS PINR IZ SUBJECT: IRAQI TURKOMAN ALLEGE KURDISH MISRULE AND US BIAS Classified By: PolMinCouns Robert S. Ford for reasons 1.4 (b,d). ¶1. (C) Summary: Iraqi Turkoman both in and out of government in late September broadly agreed that Kurdish oppression is their community's largest problem and that the U.S. sytematically discriminates against Turkoman and in favor of Kurds. Contacts generally criticized the Iraqi Turkoman Front (ITF),the dominant Turkoman political organization, but always with the caveat that Kurdish misrule is a far greater concern than ITF incompetence. Most Turkoman we met also supported Kirkuk becoming an autonomous region with a power-sharing agreement among its ethnic communities. In Tal Afar, the Turkoman-dominated city west of Mosul, the most immediate difference from Kirkuk was a more visible sectarian split - Sunni and Shia tribal leaders differed on the role of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG),GOI, and ITF, whereas Shia and Sunni Turkoman in Kirkuk offer almost identical political platforms. End summary. ¶2. (C) PolOffs from September 20-24 visited Kirkuk, Mosul, and Tal Afar to research Iraqi Turkoman politics. Turkoman interlocutors included Kirkuk Provincial Council (PC) members Hassan Turan, Zhala Nafidchi, Tahseen Kahiyya, and Najat Hassan; Kirkuki medical doctors Tonjai Nimaat, Fuad Zedan, Muhammad Fatih, and Saikhin Abd al-Khadir; women's activists Sewinj Hussein and Nahida Muhammad; Iraqi Police (IP) officers General Turhan Abd al-Rahman (Deputy Police Chief for Kirkuk province),General Burhan Tayib Taha (Police Chief for Kirkuk city),and Colonel Taha Salah al-Din; Sunni imams Hassan Abbas, Maroof Abd al-Khalik, and Sameer Fattah; Tal Afar Shia shaykhs Abdallah Wahab, Muhsin Hussein, and Abd al-Mehdi Ali Khan; and Tal Afar Sunni shaykhs Yunus Abbas, Abd al-Rahman Khidir, and Ali Muhammad Said, in addition to Hussein Avni Botsali, the Consul General at the Turkish Consulate in Mosul. Turkoman Grievance #1: Kurdish Misrule -------------- ¶3. (C) Perceived Kurdish oppression was without question the leading Kirkuki Turkoman complaint. Each interlocutor had a different version of it, but together they offered a picture of chauvinist Kurdish domination of every facet of provincial life. Turkoman PC members complained that Kurdish officials allow them no political clout and rig the ration card system to inflate the Kurdish demographic. Turkoman police 
protested that the Kurdish parties appoint unqualified, non-Kirkuki Kurds to senior security posts and unashamedly monitor Kirkuki police communications with the Interior Ministry in Baghdad. Turkoman doctors said practicing medicine in Kirkuk can be nearly impossible for non-Kurds, and that average Turkoman routinely gets turned away from government hospitals. Turkoman women's activists lamented the Kurdish parties' widespread and visible corruption. (Comment: While taking the pulse of the Turkoman population is difficult, the unanimity we observed among governmental and non-governmental interlocutors is telling. End Comment.) ¶4. (C) Three top Turkoman police officers, led by Deputy Provincial Chief of Police General Turhan, elaborated on political meddling in the Kirkuk security forces. Turhan said all Kirkuki political parties interfere; the PUK and KDP are merely the most blatant about it. Party officials regularly ask Turhan about his reports to the Interior Ministry in Baghdad, suggesting that Kurdish officers are bootlegging copies to their political parties, and both KDP and PUK al-Sayesh (Kurdish intelligence) representatives attend the weekly meeting of all security organizations operating in Kirkuk. Among the largest problems in Turhan's view are under qualified Kurdish officers - many lack backgrounds in police work or native knowledge of the area, placing a disproportionate burden on Arab and Turkoman officers native to Kirkuk. As an example, he said the Kirkuk Chief of Police - a Kurd from Erbil - recently asked Turhan the location of Kirkuk's most prominent public square, something "any Kirkuki would know." ¶5. (C) Our Turkoman partners made few exceptions for "good" Kurdish leaders (Comment: We detected a slight preference for the PUK over the KDP. End Comment). Both the Turkoman police and women's activists argued that the top PUK leaders are good men, specifically President Jalal Talabani and Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih, but that PUK apparatchiks in Kirkuk fraudulently assure them that Arabs and Turkoman happily accept Kurdish suzerainty. (Note: Deputy Police Chief Turhan knows Talabani and Salih from years working in Sulimaniya, and the lead women's activist serves as an informal advisor to Talabani on Turkoman affairs.) The doctors, on the other hand, argued there are no moderate Kurdish leaders - some take comparatively helpful positions on discrete issues but invariably return to their old ways, and all take orders from their KRG masters. BAGHDAD 00003311 002 OF 003 Turkoman: USG Victimizes Us and Favors Kurds -------------- ¶6. (C) Turkoman almost unanimously argued that the USG discriminates against them due to a strategic alliance between Washington and the Kurds. We heard a recurring explanation for this alleged bias - that it is a punishment for Turkey's refusal to host U.S. troops for the 2003 invasion, and that a U.S. soldier told Kirkuki Turkoman as much in the early days of the war. When PolOffs told a group of Turkoman medical doctors that this is a preposterous view of USG strategy, they revealed genuine astonishment that we had not heard this accusation before, such a truism it is within their circles. The otherwise sophisticated, urbane Turkish Consul General in Mosul similarly resisted arguments against this explanation for perceived USG bias. PC member Hassan Turan, an often obstinate interlocutor, further protested that the USG has never welcomed a high-level Turkoman delegation in Washington but currently is hosting a much smaller Iraqi minority leader (Shabak MP Hanin Qaddo), suggesting a plot to keep the Turkoman down. ¶7. (C) The Turkoman PC members were particularly interested in the SOFA, which they claimed to view with considerable suspicion. Turan made rather ambitious initial demands - any strategic agreement with the US must specifically reference the Turkoman and resolve the Kirkuk and hydrocarbon issues - although he backed down when pressed. The PC members nonetheless suggested the SOFA is a tool to exploit Iraq's oil, and queried PolOffs on the suspicious timing of Shell signing Iraq's first significant technical service contract. PolOffs assured the PC members that the SOFA in no way dictates Iraqi oil policy, although Turan replied with a cocksure twinkle in his eye, "I don't believe you." Iraqi Turkoman Front (ITF) Unimpressive, But Kurds Deemed Worse -------------- -------------- -------------- -------------- ¶8. (C) Few contacts offered much enthusiasm for the ITF, although none considered it anywhere near as big a problem as Kurdish oppression. The Turkish consul general, a key ITF point of contact for its essential benefactor, bluntly called the ITF a mediocre party at best, a product of the 1990s when the Kurds developed politically but most Turkoman remained under Saddam's control. The Turkoman doctors and a group of Turkoman Sunni clerics acknowledged the ITF's failure to make real gains for their constituents, but said the blame is not theirs because the Kurds refuse to share power. Others were more disparaging. A pair of Turkoman women activists said the ITF is neither representative of nor beneficial to the Turkoman population, for example, but stressed that the far greater problem for their community is Kurdish tyranny and mismanagement. Turkoman Favor Kirkuk Autonomous Region -------------- ¶9. (C) The Turkoman displayed remarkable consistency on Kirkuk's final status: they want the province in its current boundaries to be an autonomous region, with an arrangement for power-sharing among the three main ethnic groups. The PC members said a major gathering of both ITF and non-ITF Turkoman notables earlier this year established the autonomous region as the official Turkoman preference. The three Turkoman Sunni clerics likewise told us "if you want to make history in Kirkuk, make it an autonomous region," incidentally revealing a belief we heard often that Kirkuk's final status is for the USG to dictate. None of the Turkoman, including the PC members, specifically demanded a 32 percent distribution of PC seats or administrative positions. This implies perhaps a bit of flexibility on the long-term numbers albeit none at all on the necessity of a quota. Tal Afar Turkoman: Greater Sunni-Shia Divide -------------- ¶10. (C) In meetings with Turkoman tribal shaykhs from Tal Afar, the only Iraqi city with an overwhelmingly Turkoman population, the most obvious difference from Kirkuk was a greater sectarian divide. Sunni and Shia Turkoman in Kirkuk are almost (though not entirely) indistinguishable on political questions, while the Sunni-Shia divide in Tal Afar was clear, for example, in perceptions of the central government. A group of Shia sheikhs protested only the GOI's general sloth in delivering services, while the Sunni group alleged a pattern of sectarian arrests and killings by Shia-dominated ISF. The Shia Turkoman claimed only minor disagreements with the Kurds such as unnecessary Peshmerga checkpoints (perhaps indicative of a more formal relationship with Kurdish leaders),while the Sunnis claimed more BAGHDAD 00003311 003 OF 003 pernicious abuses by Kurdish security forces. Finally, only the Sunnis effused about the ITF and Turkey, calling the former the only party that truly represents Tal Afaris and the latter Iraq's most helpful neighbor. Comment -------------- ¶11. (C) One final Turkoman claim, also nearly unanimous, gives hope for Kirkuk: that Kirkuk's ethnic groups have no fundamental problem with each other, and Kirkuk's problems come from the outside. The claim is admittedly common in Iraq - Shia and Sunni Arabs often argued the same even as entire neighborhoods of Baghdad cleansed themselves by sect. Kirkuk, however, has no major grassroots militias slugging it out in the streets. External political conflicts over Kirkuk abound: the GOI and KRG both claim it, KRG-sponsored politicians mismanage it, new arrivals - Arabs before 2003 and Kurds after - rile native Kirkukis, al-Qa'ida launches periodic attacks, and KRG security forces keep the province under an iron fist. While all of these risk homegrown violence in the future, none has done so on a large scale to this point. Kirkuk's best chance for stability may be maximizing its local autonomy, whether inside or outside the KRG, so as to exploit this underlying ability to coexist. CROCKER