Union Tribune December 15, 2002  Fears over refugees, chemical warfare, Kurdish unrest and economic calamity grip Turkey as the United States talks of war against Iraq By MARCUS STERN  COPLEY NEWS SERVICE  SILOPI, Turkey – Haci Eglenen, a resident of the Turkish border town of Silopi, recalls vividly what happened the last time the United States attacked neighboring Iraq.  Residents frantically sold their televisions and refrigerators for bus tickets to safety. Inflation pushed the cost of food out of reach for those who stayed behind. And hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Kurds fled north on foot toward the Turkish border and Silopi.  The refugees became trapped in the mountains of northern Iraq without tents, food or medicine. In the days that followed, more than 1,500 died from cold, disease and dehydration. Others suffered for months in refugee camps belatedly set up in Silopi and elsewhere along the border.  "I saw a man trade his only shoes for a piece of bread," Eglenen said.  Twelve years later, the residents of Silopi fear a repeat of that horrendous humanitarian nightmare.  "If there is a war, the people know that Saddam might use chemicals," Eglenen said. "So they will be scared and they will come."  As war planners in Washington pore over their maps, Turkey is bracing for enormous social, political and economic repercussions should another war break out.  The Turkish government claims to have lost tens of billions of dollars in tourism and trade with Iraq because of the 1991 Persian Gulf War and the sanctions that followed. It fears it will lose billions more if Iraq is attacked again. Of broader concern to many analysts, however, is how a war in Iraq might affect the estimated 20 million Kurds concentrated near the borders of Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria.  The United States would like to enlist the Iraqi Kurds in the fight against Saddam Hussein. But Turkey is worried that empowering Iraq's 3.5 million Kurds might rekindle dreams of an independent homeland among Turkey's own Kurdish population of 13 million. The Turkish Kurds waged an unsuccessful war of separation from 1984 to 1999 that took 37,000 lives.  Turkey already has several thousand troops in the Kurdish areas of northern Iraq and plans to send in more if war breaks out. Ostensibly, they will be there to set up tents and head off any refugee flow. Others see the incursion as a message to the Kurds not to think of northern Iraq as a possible postwar homeland.  What happens in northern Iraq also is of concern to neighboring Syria and Iran. They both have their own restive Kurdish populations to worry about. And if Turkey takes even de facto control of northern Iraq, it could control the oil-rich cities of Mosul and Kirkuk, potentially altering the region's balance of power.  Perhaps no part of Turkey would be more directly affected by an outbreak of war than the backward southeast, with its 220-mile border with Iraq. That part of Mesopotamia has hosted more than 40 civilizations during its 10,000 years of settlement. During the seven relatively recent centuries of Ottoman rule, no international boundaries existed here. They were introduced in 1923. Today, Turkey uses barbed wire, minefields and watchtowers to mark its boundary with Iraq.  The only border station between the two countries is Habur. It is heavily fortified with Turkish gendarmes and secret police who block entry from both directions to everything but oil tankers.  This year, the Muslim holy month of Ramadan ended Dec. 4. As the sun was setting on the second-to-last day of Ramadan, just up the road from the Habur station, the people of Silopi were preparing to break their daily fast. Inside a truck yard, Haci Eglenen was asked if Silopi was bracing for another war.  "How can we prepare?" he replied. "If war comes, we will just get our children and leave." Eglenen, 43, was dressed in traditional Kurdish clothes – balloon pants, a vest and a six-sided cap called a kasket. He was standing in a graveyard of trucks no longer driven because the Habur border gate has been closed since Sept. 11, 2001. Commerce through this once-thriving border area virtually ceased that day.  Eglenen's own two trucks have been idle since then. Here, war is a distant worry. The closed border and failing economy are the more immediate concerns.  Before Sept. 11, 60,000 trucks a year passed through Silopi on their way to and from the border. Today, the number is about 3,000. The oil tankers allowed into Iraq bring back crude oil for government refineries under the U.N. oil-for-food program. The United Nations allows Iraq to sell a certain amount of crude oil for food. Turkey is a big customer.  The steady flow of tankers through the port has left a gummy petroleum carpet in the vehicle lanes. The smell of oil permeates the buildings and the clothes of the people inside. Truck driver Halil Tanis made tea and boiled eggs over a gas stove alongside his oily, idled tanker as he waited for authorities to permit him to cross into Iraq.  Before Sept. 11, the backup of tankers waiting to cross the border extended for miles. Now, even though trucks sometimes must wait 24 hours at the border for permission to cross, there is no backup. Many of the restaurants, hotels and repair shops have shut down.  "The whole economy is dependent on the road," Eglenen said. "Ninety-nine percent of the people of Silopi were living off the diesel trade. Now everybody is sitting at home waiting for the border gate to open."  The road Eglenen referred to is the fabled Silk Road, the ancient trade route Marco Polo took to China. Today, it is a two-lane strip of asphalt that snakes alongside the Tigris River past Silopi and into Iraq. It is still one of the world's great overland trade routes. At least it was until Turkish authorities closed Habur.  Up the road from Silopi is the larger town of Cizre. On the final day of Ramadan, its streets were crowded with people haggling for sheep, goats, peppers, walnuts, candy and other provisions they will need for the three-day celebration that follows Ramadan.  A basket of severed goat heads marked the entrance to a tiny corner butcher's shop. Inside, Temel Ozden, 36, was chopping up the last of a half-dozen goats and sheep. People pressed inside to make last-minute purchases for the upcoming three-day post-Ramadan celebration, known widely in Arabic as Eid but here in Turkey as Bayram.  While hacking a lamb shank with an oversized knife, Ozden decried the possibility of a war in Iraq. The economic hardship brought on by the border closing 15 months ago was a bigger concern.  "If war means the border eventually will open, then it is good," he said. "Now, with the border closed, we are fighting for survival."  Farther up the road, where Syria, Turkey and Iraq meet, five children waved their herding sticks against a blue sky as they gracefully ran circles around 200 sheep and goats grazing in a harvested wheat field. Kadriye Sigva doesn't go to school. At 10, she is a full-time herder. She and her male Kurdish cousins said they worry about war, but they became bored with the subject quickly and were more concerned about their flock. Dusk was approaching and it was time to move the animals back to the village pen.  At the end of the final day of Ramadan, the sun – large and orange – settled into the clouds just above the horizon of the nearby hillside town of Mardin. The sunset marked the end of Islam's holy month. Mardin's heavy concentration of Kurds reflects the makeup of the rest of southeast Turkey. But the peaceful and bucolic scene of the sun setting over the ancient city that day belied the terrible tension between the Kurds and the Turkish government. It is that tension that makes the fate of the Kurds a dangerous wild card should war break out.  Already, Turkey, Syria and Iran worry about loose talk of carving up a possible postwar Iraq into three countries: one for the Shiite Muslims with ties to Iran; one for the non-Kurdish Sunni Muslims; and one for the Kurds, who are mostly Sunni Muslim. They worry about the effect of such talk on the Kurds living within their own borders.  The morning after Ramadan ended, on the first day of Bayram, a group of Kurdish villagers, in keeping with tradition, dressed up and gathered on a hilltop cemetery to honor their dead. The 400-year-old village had been known for centuries by the Kurdish name of Carmo. But in the 1950s, the Turkish government gave it a Turkish name – Kumlucat.  Kumlucat, about 20 miles north of the agricultural center of Diyarbakir, lies in the heart of a pastoral region where the Turkish military systematically depopulated 3,600 Kurdish villages beginning in the early 1990s. The depopulation program was part of an effort to put down a bloody 15-year war of succession waged by the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK.  The group, designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the United States, recently changed its name to the Kurdistan Freedom and Democracy Congress.  The war, which took 37,000 lives, essentially ended in 1999 with the arrest of Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the uprising. Many of the remaining Kurdish forces fled to northern Iraq, where the Turkish military still pursues them. They are the reason the border with Iraq is marked by barbed wire, minefields and watchtowers. Many believe they also are the reason the border gate at Habur remains closed, causing hardship for the Kurds on both sides.  None of the Kumlucat villagers would speak publicly, fearing reprisals by government security forces. But one privately expressed support for an attack on Iraq as long as Turkish forces weren't involved. Turkish forces, he feared, would use the opportunity to move against the Kurds in northern Iraq.  Not far from Kumlucat is the former PKK stronghold of Saklat. It was one of the villages the Turkish military depopulated.  The military emptied the village after the PKK ambushed Turkish forces there in 1994. In 2000, after six years of forced departure, the people of Saklat were allowed to return to their village. So far, about one-third of the 3,000 residents have. The only thing holding back the others, say the returnees, is a lack of money to make the move.  On the first day of Bayram, the boys of Saklat were engaged in a spirited soccer match with boys from a nearby village. Women were preparing meals for the celebration, and men were handing out candy to children. Hasan Yildiz, 65, the village muhtar, or leader, said the nickname for the village before had been Little Kuwait because of its prosperity, gained from raising and selling livestock. When the villagers returned after six years, they found the houses had collapsed from neglect. And, of course, the livestock was gone. Now, 120 houses have been built with material and money provided by the government.  "At the moment, we are happy," Yildiz said. "We are back and rebuilding and at peace." But not all the villages have been so lucky.  Nine years ago, the military forced the 300 families of Alaca, a village about 85 miles north of Diyarbakir, to leave their homes. Fifty of the families resettled together in vacant space on the edge of the ever-growing city of Diyarbikar. The squatters call their new makeshift neighborhood Gurdogan. Although they are building brick homes on the land where they're squatting, they want to move back to their village. So far, they said, the government hasn't replied to their petition to return.  Their neighborhood is little more than a hillside shantytown. When it rains, the unpaved roads become rivers of mud. Here in the city they have space to sleep but nowhere to raise livestock or grow crops, they complain. The only hope of work for the men is as day laborers on construction sites, where they make the equivalent of $7 a day, if they are lucky enough to get work.  Ferac, 26, did not want to give his last name for fear of retaliation from security forces. He has built a three-room house for his wife and three children, ages 4, 3 and 6 months.  "One day we eat, one day we go hungry," Ferac said.  Mehmet, 34, also was afraid to give his last name. He said the government had become angry with their rural village because the men refused to participate in the government's controversial village guard program. Under the program, men in each village were selected and assigned to keep a close eye on the village, informing the government of any PKK activities.  When the men of Alaca refused, Mehmet said, the military torched their homes, killed their animals and put them on the road with only the clothes they were wearing. They walked one hour before boarding trucks that took them to destinations where they were forced to fend for themselves, Mehmet said.  "If we had become village guards, we would have been targeted by the PKK. When we didn't, we were targeted by the government," Mehmet said.  Today, they are neither villagers nor city dwellers, trapped somewhere in between.  And, like other Kurds throughout southeast Turkey, one subject remains firmly taboo. They don't dare speculate out loud about whether war in Iraq might take them a step closer or a step farther away from their long-cherished dream of an independent Kurdish homeland.