Turkey's PM offers training for Iraq police

Turkey’s prime minister today offered training for the Iraqi police and army, and urged power-sharing among ethnic groups in the Iraqi oil centre of Kirkuk.

“There needs to be a plan for Kirkuk that encompasses all the ethnic groups who live there,” prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said at an Ankara news conference with5 his Iraqi counterpart, Nouri Maliki.

Turkey fears that Iraqi Kurds are trying to take control of the oil-rich, northern city as part of their push for an independent state on Turkey’s border. Kirkuk has a Kurdish majority.

“Kirkuk is Iraq’s city,” Maliki said. “It will stay in possession of Iraqis.”

Erdogan said Turkey was ready to offer training for Iraqi security forces to help achieve stability in that country.

“We are ready to give every kind of support,” he said. “We are ready to train them, in the military field, and in the police field.”

Turkey worries that ethnic and sectarian clashes are pulling Iraq toward a civil war that could break the country apart in several autonomous sections and lead to the emergence of an independent Kurdish state.

Such a development, some Turkish analysts say, could encourage separatist Kurds in Turkey to revolt. Turkey is urging Iraq and the United States to root out Kurdish guerrillas, who have been waging hit-and-run attacks from Iraq in Turkey’s south-east since 1984. More than 37,000 people have died in the fighting.

Turkey’s foreign minister Abdullah Gul warned this week that allowing Iraq to split apart would force its neighbours to take action and usher in “an unbelievable new era of darkness”.

Maliki’s visit was originally scheduled for October 16, but was cancelled after a sandstorm in Baghdad prevented his plane from taking off.

The Iraqi leader is accompanied by a large portion of his Cabinet, including foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari, who is a Kurd, and economy-related ministers.

Iraq’s minister of state for national security, Sherwan al-Waili, planned to meet Turkish security officials for talks on possible co-operation in Turkey’s fight against Kurdish guerrillas.