Powell Reassures Turkey That Armed Kurds Will Leave Kirkuk

Turkish officials voiced alarm Thursday over the Kurdish militia occupation of Kirkuk but accepted an assurance from U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell that a large American military force would reach the Iraqi oil city today and persuade the armed Kurds to leave.

Turkey’s leaders have threatened repeatedly in recent weeks to send their army into Iraq to prevent a Kurdish takeover of Kirkuk, fearing that the Kurds would use the city’s oil wealth to finance a breakaway state hostile to Turkey. About 40,000 Turkish troops are massed along the Iraqi border about 150 miles northwest of Kirkuk.

The Bush administration has warned Turkey to keep its troops out of Iraq, but the sudden turn of events in Kirkuk put a new strain on relations between longtime NATO allies deeply at odds over the war.

Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said Turkey was “ready for every option” to protect its security but was willing to give the United States time. He accepted a U.S. offer to escort Turkish military observers to Kirkuk to monitor the movements of thousands of Kurdish peshmerga fighters who swept into the city with about 100 U.S. Special Forces early Thursday as Iraqi army resistance collapsed.

Turkish television broadcast scenes of the jubilant occupation all day, alongside interviews with frightened members of the city’s Turkmen minority, ethnic kin of the Turks. Turkish journalists reported from Kirkuk that the Kurds entered the city’s courthouse and destroyed land records, a step that could make it easier for them to expel the Turkmens.

Turkish opposition leaders voiced anger and dismay over the peshmergas’ move, and some called on the army to respond. Government officials said privately that they felt that they had been misled by Powell, who had visited Ankara on April 2 with a promise that U.S. forces, not the Kurdish militias, would take control of Kirkuk and nearby Mosul.

Within hours of the fall of Kirkuk, at about 7:30 a.m. in Washington, Gul was on the phone with Powell, reminding the secretary of that promise.

The secretary replied that his assurances were still valid, Gul said in a Turkish television interview. He said Powell promised that paratroops of the U.S. Army’s 173rd Airborne Brigade would arrive in Kirkuk “within a few hours to remove the peshmerga.”

Powell also offered to invoke an agreement worked out last week that would allow Turkey to dispatch a small number of military observers to join U.S. forces in Kirkuk. Officials said four Turkish officers would go to the city with U.S. military units.

“We have accepted this,” Gul said. “In the face of these guarantees there is no need for any tension.”

Pressed on whether Turkish troops would move toward Kirkuk, Gul told the interviewer: “Let’s maintain our optimism. Otherwise, plans are ready for every option. I hope that this mistake will be fixed immediately.”

To further placate the Turks, the Bush administration won agreement from Jalal Talabani, leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, to pull back his peshmerga fighters who accompanied U.S. Special Forces into Kirkuk, American officials said.

Talabani also sent a message directly to the Turks and made a public statement to Turkish television pledging to pull out his militias, which he said had entered the city to prevent looting until American forces could arrive.

“They will leave tomorrow, I promise you,” he said Thursday. “Not one will remain.”

Turkey fears that Kurdish militias will expel Turkmens from Kirkuk and Mosul and push for an autonomous Kurdish state -- one that might support the resurgence of a violent separatist movement among Turkey’s 12 million Kurds.

Turkish officials have said they are skeptical of U.S. and Kurdish assurances that the Kurdish region will not break away from Iraq. Resisting strong pressure from the Bush administration and European leaders, the Turks have refused to rule out a military incursion into northern Iraq.

But during Powell’s visit to Ankara, they agreed to a system of emergency consultations on war developments in Iraq and promised to coordinate any military action with U.S. officials.

Thursday’s events in Kirkuk provided the first test of that emergency system, and U.S. officials said it was working.

“What we agreed with the Turks last week was, were there to be developments that cause concern, we would immediately talk and figure out how to handle them so that no undue concern had to arise in Turkey,” State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said. “We think we’ve doing that successfully in this situation. Our military has offered the possibility of liaison arrangements, liaison officers from Turkey.”

Boucher said the administration is holding to its pledge that no single group will control any of Iraq’s cities or oil fields. “U.S. forces are on the ground in Kirkuk and will be as appropriate in Mosul and are taking full command in those towns.”

“This is a crisis averted,” said a senior State Department official.

But many Turkish political leaders were not convinced and called on the army to act.

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Times staff writer Robin Wright in Washington contributed to this report.