Iraq Election Law Vetoed by Sunni Vice President

BY AMOS

UPDATE: Here is some more behind-the-scenes detail as well as speculation about Hashimi's vote. The author suggests that Hashimi is trying to position himself as a nationalist but is actually following a line that benefits Kurdish interests. He breaks down some of the seat numbers and explains why the Kurds are also interested in the minorities clause (it has to do with increasing Kurdish influence over Shabak and Yezidi lists).

Last week, the Iraqi parliament passed an elections law that was to have resolved some of the contentious issues surrounding voter eligibility. But today, one of Iraq's two vice presidents, Tariq al-Hashimi, vetoed the bill. Hashimi belongs to the Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni Islamist coalition. He objected specifically to some of the details of the proposed legislation which limited the representation of "minorities" and Iraqi refugees living abroad to 5%, according to the New York Times. Most of the 2 million Iraqi refugees residing outside the country are Sunnis; their numbers constitute 8% of the country's population of 25 million.

Initially, it seemed that the bill's handling of Kirkuk voter lists - it decided that 2009 lists of city inhabitants would be used - favored Kurdish interests, since it is widely believed that the Kurdish share of Kirkuk's population has increased significantly in the last 5 years. But on Tuesday, the president of the Kurdistan Regional Government, Massoud Barzani, expressed his opposition to the law, threatening a Kurdish boycott in response to the seat allocation (i.e., the 5% limit). Apparently, Iraq's president, Jalal Talabani, who is a Kurd, had also threatened to veto the bill, already before Hashimi did so (NYT).

New Election Law in Iraq

BY AMOS

The Iraqi parliament passed a crucial elections law yesterday, which is said to end a political stalemate that had prevented any progress on the road to holding new elections. The electoral law specifically addresses the thorny issue of voter lists in Kirkuk, the oil-rich city in northern Iraq, home to a mixed population of Kurds, Arabs, and Turkmens.

Located in the Kirkuk Governorate, outside of the present borders of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), which is currently comprised of the Iraqi governorates Arbīl, As-Sulaymāniyyah, and Duhok , the former Ottoman city's political future is still uncertain. As is well-known, Saddam Hussein settled large numbers of Arabs in the city to reduce Kurdish influence there. In the post-Saddam era, large numbers of Kurds have moved to Kirkuk. Arabs and Turkmens in the city and the Iraqi central government fear that Kirkuk will fall under KRG control. They have thus far insisted that future Iraqi elections, to be held in early 2010, would use 2004 voters' lists for Kirkuk. These lists would presumably have fewer Kurdish eligible voters for Kirkuk than lists compiled in 2009. As a result of the political stalemate among the various interested parties, a comprehensive elections law has languished.



The bill that passed yesterday, appears on the face of things to favor the Kurds. Under the new elections law, Kirkuk voter eligibility will be determined by 2009 residents' lists. Such lists would increase the Kurdish share of the vote and political representation of the city. As Juan Cole, translating and paraphrasing Al-Zaman, writes, Kurdistan Alliance MPs were jubilant at the passage of the bill. Cole believes that American Vice President Joe Biden must have lobbied hard with Arab leaders to achieve the passage of this bill (he takes issue with another blogger on this point):

Steve Clemons reports that Vice President Joe Biden played a central role in the negotiations. Clemons stresses his calls with Kurdistan president Massoud Barzani. But since the legislation was a big win for the Kurds, the hard talk must have been with Arab leaders such as PM Nuri al-Maliki, who gave up a lot on Kirkuk.

The New York Times quotes both Turkmen and Arab legislators from the city, reporting that

[t]he compromise satisfied each of the groups competing for dominance in Kirkuk. “We have passed a stage, a crisis, and no one is a loser,” said Abbas al-Bayti, a Turkmen legislator.

Osama al-Najafi, an Arab legislator, said: “There will be no injustice for the people of Kirkuk. This is a great victory for their historical rights.”

There is a proviso in the elections law intended to prevent voter registration fraud in Kirkuk, but that in itself does not seem enough to assuage the fears of Arabs and Turkmens that they might find themselves under Kurdish rule. Does anyone know how the impasse was really resolved? My suspicion is that some high-stakes wrangling was involved that included more far-reaching guarantees to the various parties, all backed by the U.S. government.

Historical Note on Turkish-American Relations

The dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire

(Perry Castaneda, click to magnify)

Hazbani's questions about U.S. policy toward the Ottoman empire and the Turkish republic after WWI sparked my interest in the history of Turco-American relations.

As Hazbani noted, the U.S. did not declare war on the Ottoman empire in 1917 - a decision in line with the non-interventionist policy it had pursued since the late 19th century. The U.S.'s main concerns then were protecting the investments that American missionaries had made in educational institutions, as part of efforts to convert Ottoman Christian minorities. But the American also had an eye to future economic opportunities. The latter motivations became preeminent after 1918, when most of the Ottoman Christian populations had either left or been killed or deported.

It is interesting that Hazbani mentioned a US Navy paper, on "USN relations with Turkey from 1914-1940," as the person whom many associate with redefinition of American relations with Turkey after the war was Admiral Mark Bristol, the U.S. High Commissioner to Turkey from 1919-1927. Bristol saw economic and investment opportunities for the U.S. in Turkey, and he was not blind to the navy's need for oil (Donald Bloxham, The Great Game of Genocide, pp. 185-187).

Another point that Hazbani made was about the relatively benign stance of the U.S. toward the defeated Ottoman empire, especially when compared to the rapacious aims of the British, French, Italians, and Greeks.

Under the Treaty of Sèvres, signed in August 10, 1920, the Ottoman empire was not only stripped of all its non-Turkish territories (in the Balkans and in North Africa), but also of some of its Anatolian possessions. The oil-rich town of Mosul, one of those former Ottoman empire possessions that Melih Can was talking about, was seized by the British as part of the Iraq mandate. The French took Cilisia as part of their Syrian mandate. In Eastern Anatolia, the Allies recognized the Armenian and Kurdish claims to independence. Finally, in May 1919, the Allies approved of the Greek occupation of Smyrna (or Izmir in Turkish) in the west, also on the grounds of national self-determination (Greek statisticians claimed a Greek majority in the city). However, the Italians were allowed to occupy Antalya in SW Anatolia (Norman Rich, Great Power Diplomacy since 1914, p. 61).

The U.S. did not participate in this, partly because it had not been party to the irresponsible promises of territorial spoils made by the Allies to each other. However, American businessmen were happy to go along with the British in looking for oil in tapping the Mosul oil fields. There actually was a certain convergence of US and British interests here, but the U.S. came to differ with Britain and the other European powers on the future of Turkey. The British, under Lloyd George, hoped to persuade America to guarantee Armenian independence and thereby put in place a check against both Bolshevik and possible Turkish pan-Islamist (or pan-Turkic?) ambitions. The Americans refused, and eventually came to see a strong, nationalist Turkey as a preferred alternative (Bloxham, Ibid., pp. 192-193).

Atatürk (Wikipedia)

In the meantime, Mustafa Kemal had risen to the top of the Turkish nationalist movement. In October 1920, the Bolsheviks had overthrown the Armenian Republic and turned it into a Soviet Republic. But with the Red Army embroiled in a war with Poland, Kemal attacked the Armenian Soviet Republic and regained all the lost Turkish territory, including Batum, Kars, and Ardahan; Batum was later returned, and became part of the Georgian Soviet. Kemal also signed a treaty with France, which returned Cilicia in southern Anatolia as well as arms, in exchange for Tureky's recognition of the French mandate over Syria. Lastly, the Italians surrender their Anatolian claims in return for certain economic stipulations and Turkish acceptance of their possession of Tripoli, the Dodecanese islands, and Rhodes. In August 1922, the Turks took back Smyrna from the Greeks. Finally, the nationalist forces headed north to Constantinople, where the British were still defending the sultan and the Treaty of Sèvres. Soon thereafter, Kemal led the domestic revolution that deposed Sultan Mehmed VI on November 17. The net result: Anatolia had been secured under the leadership of a modern, Western-oriented Turkish Republic.

These Turkish gains were consolidated under the November 20, 1922 Treaty of Lausanne. Armenian and Kurdish independence in eastern Anatolia had been quashed, as had Greek claims in the west (eastern Thrace); only Mosul was lost to the Mesopotamian mandate, and Alexandretta (İskenderun) to France (the latter became part of Turkey again in 1939) (Rich, Ibid., pp. 85-87).

(Map source: Wikipedia)

From 1922 to 1989, American policy viewed a strong, undivided Turkey as a bulwark against the Soviet Union and as a force for stability in the region. Although Turkey's pursuit of an autarkic economic policy and its trade relations with the Weimar Republic and then the Hitler regime during the interwar period and into the 1930s meant that many of America's economic hopes were not realized then, the military and economic aid that poured into Turkey in the 1940s cemented the American role in the country.

Turkey, it seems clear, now wants some of the oil spoils of which it had been deprived by the British after WWI. In addition to protecting its population from terrorist attacks, the country also wants to safeguard its territorial integrity, which it sees threatened by the rise of a Kurdish state on its southern border, and Kurdish control over oil revenues from Kirkuk and elsewhere. The trick for the U.S. will be to determine how to keep the Turks in line with its own interests, at the lowest price possible.

The Hrant Dink Assassination as a Turning Point

Hrant Dink (Source: European Academy Berlin)

There are two ways to read the recent murder of the Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink. Some fear that this is the beginning of an open season on those who, like Dink, challenge the ultra-nationalist vision of Turkey. On the other hand, the public and literary condemnations of the murder may also signal the self-assertion of Turkish liberals.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned the murder in the strongest terms, but critics objected to the manner in which this condemnation was framed, especially in parts of the Armenian diaspora.

"A bullet has been fired at democracy and freedom of expression," Erdogan announced shortly after news of Dink's assassination reached him. But Dink had been prosecuted for exercising his freedom of expression under the infamous article 301 of Turkey's penal code. Prior to his murder, Dink and other Turkish citizens who spoke out against the denial of the Armenian Genocide, discrimination against Kurds, and the lack of tolerance in their society more generally, had been attacked in many of the same newspapers who now claimed that the murder had been a strike against Turkey. These declarations also masked the truth that Dink was singled out as an Armenian by his killer.

But the Turkish media also contained reflections on Turkish society's wider responsibility for Dink's death. Mehmet Ali Birand wrote in the Turkish Daily News that "301 killed Hrant Dink." Omer Taspinar, in Today's Zaman, declared that

We are all complicit in Hrant Dink’s murder. Turkey’s conspiracy-prone public debate is increasingly producing an anti-European, anti-American, anti-Kurd, anti-Armenian and anti-liberal nationalism.

He denounced the witch-hunt against Turkish liberals:

Our incorrigible sense of insecurity has turned the founding ideology of the republic into an aggressive reflex against perceived enemies - -- enemies that we often create in our own imagination. How else can one explain the trials of Orhan Pamuk, Elif Safak and Hrant Dink in 2006? What about the shameful treatment of Professor Atilla Yayla for simply voicing an opinion?

And called out Justice Minister Cemil Cicek

who not too long ago blamed the organizers of a conference on the Armenian question for “stabbing the Turkish nation in the back.”

Nevertheless, the more liberal voices in Turkey are well aware of the real and imaginary threats firing nationalist passions in their country. PKK terrorism in southeastern Turkey continues to worry the country's leaders, and the week before the Hrant Dink assassination, Turkey saw a marked escalation in the rhetoric about Kirkuk, from where Iraqi oil is pumped to Ceyhan (see SPIEGEL for more).

Kurds to Baker-Hamilton: Don't Sell Us Out Again

An old map of Kurdish lands, ca. 1992 (source: Perry-Castaneda Map Collection).

You can read Masrour Barzani's response to the Iraq Study Group Report in the Washington Post or on the Kurdistan Regional Government website. The immediate aim is clearly to prevent a cancellation of the popular referendum planned for Kirkuk. The long-term aim is to safeguard the autonomy of Kurdistan within Iraq - in other words to maintain the decentralized structure outlined in the constitution - and to protect the Kurds from hostile external intervention.

If you recall, the ISG Report warned about the violent fallout such a referendum might engender (see my previous post). Clearly, Baker and Hamilton want to stop such a referendum from taking place - ostensibly to prevent civil strife in Kirkuk but, more importantly, to keep Turkey happy. Turkey, it should be noted, claims that it is concerned about the safety of the Turkman population; it is probably most concerned about ceding any more oil-rich areas and powers to the Kurds. Barzani does not mention Kirkuk at all, but he objects vehemently to the ISG Report's "flippant" treatment of the constitution (after all, it guarantees the right of the Kurds to hold such a referendum). In the Baker-Hamilton report, the words "amending the constitution" often appear immediately before the phrase "settling the future of Kirkuk" (see for example ISG Report, p. 18).

The Baker-Hamilton report takes pains to portray the Iraqi constitution as a partisan document engineered by the Kurds and Shi'a at the expense of the Sunni. Yes, the constitution happens to reflect the interests of Shi'a and Kurds. There's a reason for that - as the report admits, "The Sunnis did not actively participate in the constitution-drafting process." Maybe if they hadn't been so busy killing Americans and other Iraqis, things would look different today. Why should the rejectionist forces be rewarded now? Is it all as part of the imperative to preserve a united Iraq? I think that if the ISG had visited Kurdistan they might have understood better that it's either this kind of Iraq or no Iraq at all for the Kurds.

What I like about Barzani's argument is that it points out the pitfalls of the "realist" bandwagon. The realists have been sharpening their knives against the neo-cons for years. Their current offensive builds on the demonization of neo-conservative visions of the Middle East. To be fair, when turned into policy, those visions have been disastrous. But to imply that Baker & co. represent a more moral approach is perverse. Let's not forget - lest we do, Barzani won't let us - that the report "was partly written by those who orchestrated the saving of Saddam Hussein in 1991." Let's not forget that this act of realism led to the deaths of thousands of Kurds. Yes, today, there are 3,000 Iraqis dying every month. But few of them are Kurds. Why should the Kurds have to pay for the mess that is Iraq? Why should their interests be sacrificed at the expense of those within Iraq and outside its borders who have consistently embraced the rejectionist and obstructionist policies that have led to the daily massacres of Iraqi civilians and the deaths of many American soldiers?

Against the logic of appeasement, which in this case means privileging the interests of regional powers over those of people on the ground, Barzani invokes democracy - he uses the word seven times. One, the constitution reflects a vote by the majority of the Iraqi population (true). Two, Kurdistan's autonomy is firmly anchored in the will of the Kurdish people. It seems bizarre that the only undeniably positive outcomes of the American invasion of Iraq should be sacrificed at the altar of a realpolitik that is likely to make things worse for America in the long-term. At the minimum, those championing this part of the Baker-Hamilton report should not be allowed to get away with presenting themselves as morally superior to anyone. It would behoove them to take note of Barzani's appeal:

Don't sell us out to our authoritarian neighbors and those who are terrorizing our communities. We agreed democratically to participate in this project because we were guaranteed the rights needed to protect our people. We Kurds are asking President Bush and America to remember the sacrifices we have made to keep your loved ones safe in Iraq. We are asking you to keep a promise where those before you have failed.

Unfortunately, in today's political climate, the opponents of Bush are likely to be so blinded by their thirst for revenge against the neo-cons, that they will dismiss this as mere rhetoric.