Turkish men work in a field to set up a tent for refugees in southeastern Turkey

ANKARA, January 29 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – As the U.S. military offensive against Iraq seemingly draws closer, Turkey is gripped by the fear of a repetition of the 1991 crisis when 450,000 Iraqi Kurdish refugees flooded the country and that another Gulf war might spur a second exodus.

Unlike the messy aftermath of the Gulf War, when Kurds who rose up against the Iraqi regime were met with the helicopter gunships and ground troops of an angry Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, the map of Iraq is significantly different today, as is the kind of war the Bush administration would like to wage against the Iraqi regime, the Christian Science Monitor reported Wednesday, January 29.

The Turks, Kurds, aid agencies, and neighboring countries fear that such a war could spark another refugee crisis, one that would reopen a whole host of related political and economic problems.

Many Kurds say another war in Iraq will be a new humanitarian disaster. For Turks, the possibility of an influx of Iraqi Kurdish refugees raises other concerns, from the high cost of aiding desperate people to the political risks of allowing thousands of Kurds into restive southeastern Turkey. Iran and Syria harbor similar unease about the effects on their own Kurdish populations, the CS Monitor said.

The international daily newspaper added that anxiety over an unpredictable outcome of a U.S.-led war against Iraq is a key concern that binds Turkey with some of the countries it invited to the antiwar conference it hosted in Istanbul late last week, including Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt.

The U.S. sent on Tuesday a State Department delegation to discuss plans for dealing with refugees and other humanitarian issues that might arise from a war against Iraq.

“It’s an issue that’s definitely on our screen, and of course it is a concern,” says a U.S. official.

“We recognize that it’s one of Turkey’s concerns about an operation, and it has been part of the military discussions as well.” He added.

When Turkish officials look back more than a decade to the first Gulf War, they recall some 450,000 Iraqi Kurdish refugees who climbed over snow-capped mountains to cross into Turkey.

Another 1.3 million went to Iran. But Iranian officials made it clear that the country’s borders would be closed to any refugees fleeing a new potential showdown in Iraq. Tehran also ordered troops amassed across borders with Iraq

“If there will be a stream of refugees again, we will stop them before they come to Turkey,” says A. Cemil Serhadli, the governor of Diyarbakir, the main city in southeastern Turkey.

If the Kurds can’t be contained and housed within Iraq itself, “then a second round of camps will be constructed in border towns of Turkey.” As a last resort, he says, Diyarbakir will serve as a transit point for refugees.

U.N. officials from Geneva, meanwhile, have arrived in Turkey and are searching for locations for Iraqi refugees. Turkish media have reported that government and humanitarian officials here have plans to erect camps at 13 sites in Iraq and five in Turkey, citing a document that was formulated and signed by Turkey’s former prime minister, Bulent Ecevit.

Turkey will prepare for the possibility of accommodating up to 276,000 refugees, the paper quoted the document as saying.

Although Turkish officials say they cannot estimate how much caring for refugees would cost, the potential need to deal with a refugee crisis has figured into ongoing discussions with U.S. officials over the Pentagon’s request to use Turkish facilities in a war.

Were Turkey to prevent refugees on the run from entering its borders, however, it could come under international criticism, said the paper.

“Our position is that the border should remain open for those seeking asylum,” said Metin Corabatir, the UNHCR representative in Ankara.

“The right to seek asylum is a fundamental human right, outlined in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” and reiterated in the 1951 convention on the status of refugees, the CS Monitor said.

“If there is a refugee crisis, without the permission of any government it is the right of UNHCR to have access to an endangered populations,” Corabatir added.

Red Crescent officials in southeastern Turkey say that they are also stocking up on tents and food, promising that - should another refugee crisis occur - they will be better prepared this time.

But some say that there will no reason for the Kurds to flee. In an invasion of the sort that US officials envision Saddam’s armed forces would be neutralized so quickly that he would not be able to strike northern Iraq.

“There will be no mass exodus like we witnessed in 1991,” says Safeen Dizayee, the Ankara representative of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), one of the two main parties now in control of northern Iraq.

“Today, there is a good Kurdish administration in the region. There are 80,000 Kurdish troops who can put up a good line of defense,” he adds.