Turkey wants to prevent the city and its giant pool of underground oil from becoming an economic engine that could fund a bid by Iraqi Kurds for independence, a move would threaten to draw Turkey, with its 15 million Kurds, into a regional war.
"We hope the natural resources of Kirkuk would be used by all groups in Iraq without discrimination," Gonul told the International Institute of Strategic Studies conference in the Bahraini capital.
MANAMA, Bahrain
Turkey renewed its frustration on Sunday with the Kurdish bid for domination of Iraq's oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk, which lies on Iraq's volatile ethnic fault lines between Arabs and Kurds.
Mehmet Vecdi Gonul, Turkey's defense minister, said Kirkuk's future status carries major implications for Turkey and Iraq's other neighbors no matter who controls the city and its surrounding oilfields. Gonul asked the Iraqi Shiite and Kurdish-led government not to impose an "unrealistic" future on Kirkuk.
But Iraq's Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, an ethnic Kurd, warned Turkey not to meddle in "our Kirkuk."
"You speak of Kirkuk as if it is a Turkish city," Zebari said told Gonul. "These are matters for Iraq to decide."
Turkey wants to prevent the city and its giant pool of underground oil from becoming an economic engine that could fund a bid by Iraqi Kurds for independence, a move would threaten to draw Turkey, with its 15 million Kurds, into a regional war.
"We hope the natural resources of Kirkuk would be used by all groups in Iraq without discrimination," Gonul told the International Institute of Strategic Studies conference in the Bahraini capital.
Kirkuk is an ancient city once part of the Ottoman Empire, with a large minority of ethnic Turks as well as various Christians, Shiite and Sunni Arabs, Armenians and Assyrians.
Since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, Kurdish forces in northern Iraq have rallied to reverse what they claim to be an Arabization policy of Saddam Hussein, which purged Kirkuk and other oil-rich areas of Kurds and replaced them with Arab settlers.
Thousands of Kurdish settlers from northern Iraq have flooded back into Kirkuk, colonizing the city's desert outskirts. Many believe the influx is a bid to change the city's ethnic balance ahead of a 2007 census and referendum that aims to decide whether Kirkuk will be annexed to Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region.
The grim Iraq Study Group assessment issued in Washington last week described Kirkuk as a "powder keg" and recommends the referendum be delayed.
Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt warned those in favoring in the partition of Iraq that they were treading on dangerous ground.
"Every partition is written in blood," Bildt told the security conference in Bahrain. "The carnage we see today is only the beginning of the bloodshed we will see if there is a partition."
Gonul agreed, saying Iraq's fragmentation "will be the beginning of a disaster that will engulf the whole region."
The International Institute of Strategic Studies conference has brought together some 200 security representatives from more than 20 countries, including Iran, Iraq and the United States.
