Iraqi Kurd presses Kirkuk claim, riles Turkey

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L1418466.htm

ANKARA, Jan 14 (Reuters) - A senior Iraqi Kurd on Wednesday pressed his people's claim to the oil-rich northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, drawing a swift and frosty reaction from Turkey, which fears the establishment of a separate Kurdish state. On the eve of a trip to Ankara, Berham Salih, a leading member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), also told Turkey's NTV television he saw his region of "Kurdistan" having a high degree of autonomy in a future federal Iraq.

"In my view, Kirkuk is a part of Kurdistan, both from the demographic point of view and also geographically and historically," Salih told NTV. "But as somebody bound by democratic values and by the democracy we forsee for Iraq I say 'Let the people of Kirkuk decide (in a referendum).'"

Under the regime of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, ethnic Kurds and Turkmen were pushed out of Kirkuk and replaced with Arabs in an attempt to change the demographic character of the region, which sits on billions of barrels of oil.

The Turkmen -- ethnically close to Turkey -- and Arabs are bitterly opposed to a plan by Kurds on Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing Council to grant significant autonomy to a Kurdish area in northern Iraq, incorporating three provinces they wrested from Baghdad after the 1991 Gulf War.

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[legin]

1. Very very slightly on topic

Poland, partitions of. The basic causes leading to the three successive partitions (1772, 1793, 1795) that eliminated Poland from the map were the decay and the internal disunity of Poland and the emergence of its neighbors, Russia and Prussia, as leading European powers.

The first partition was proposed when Frederick II of Prussia feared that Russia was about to take the Danubian principalities from the Ottoman Empire and thus provoke an Austro-Russian war. Frederick proposed that Russia annex part of Poland in return for renouncing the Danubian principalities and that Prussia and Austria take parts of Poland to balance Russia's gain.

This arrangement satisfied Catherine II of Russia, who had long contemplated such a partition. Maria Theresa of Austria, though opposing the scheme both on moral and political grounds, nevertheless partook in the spoils, which otherwise would have fallen entirely to Russia and Prussia. King Stanislaus II of Poland was unable to resist his three neighbors.

The partition of 1772 gave Pomerelia and Ermeland to Prussia, Latgale and Belarus E of the Dvina and Dnieper rivers to Russia, and Galicia to Austria.

(a little more...)

http://reference.allrefer.com/encyclopedia/P/Poland-P.html

[legin]

2. Probably I ain't read the right books

but i would love it if history was a little more sciencey in outlook.

Instead of narratives of so and so did this and then so and so did that, it would be nice if there was a study of all the times in history when there was a country with a minority that was in it's country and in the country next to it, like Turkey/Iraq/Kurds and if I remember rightly this Polish partitions stuff.