On the Iraqi border, a life of struggle

Turkey ends a lucrative cross-border oil trade over concerns about who might gain control of Iraq's oil fields, leaving many families at a loss.

By SUSAN TAYLOR MARTIN, Times Senior Correspondent
Photos by JAMIE FRANCIS of the Times staff

A few hundred feet inside southeastern Turkey, roadside tea shops are set up at Habur gate, where trucks wait to cross the border. The mountains of Iraq are visible in the background.

© St. Petersburg Times
published January 19, 2003

HABUR GATE, Turkey-Iraq border -- When business is slow -- as it usually is these days -- Halil Avonal dreams of what it would be like to be rich.

He would buy a car, nothing flashy, just a used Turkish-made Toros. He would add a couple of rooms to the house, so he and his wife could have some privacy from the kids. And he would like to . . .

"Halil! Come! What cigarettes do you have?"

A rough voice jerks him back to reality. It is that of a trucker, in one of dozens of oil tankers lining the shoulder of an otherwise empty four-lane highway. The trucks are waiting to cross the border into Iraq where they will load up with crude oil.

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Avonal trots over to an aging tanker and rummages through his sack of cigarette cartons -- Parliament, Winston, Marlboro, Samsun. If he's lucky, the trucker will take a carton of Parliaments and Avonal will make 1-million liras on the sale -- about 60 cents. If he's not so lucky, the trucker will buy a single pack of Samsuns, a cheap Turkish brand, and Avonal will pocket just 6 cents.

For two years, Avonal also drove a truck, carrying potatoes and onions and flour into northern Iraq and returning with diesel oil stored in fiberglass tanks. "Doing fiber," as it was called, wasn't a great living, but it was a good one. For the only time in his 37 years, Avonal dared to think that his six children might have a decent future.

Then in 2001, Turkey banned the diesel oil trade. Avonal and thousands of others who had been doing fiber suddenly found themselves out of work.

There were many reasons for the ban. But the major one reflects a growing concern: Who will control Iraq's oil after Saddam Hussein is gone?

Turkey fears that the rich fields of northern Iraq might end up with the Kurds, a Muslim minority that has created a semi-independent state in the north. After years of struggle with its own Kurdish population, Turkey worries that its Kurds will join those in Iraq in pushing for a separate nation.

Iraq's Kurds profited handsomely by taxing the trucks that carried diesel oil across their side of the border. Afraid the riches might fund an independence move, Turkey decided the diesel program had to end.

Which left Halil Avonal with nothing to do but walk up and down the line of crude-oil tankers waiting at Habur gate. Today, as usual, he is joined by his 12-year-old son, Murat.

It is a Friday and Murat should be in school. But the family has so little money that Murat, wearing his navy blue school uniform, sells cigarettes too.

Or tries to. It is already 11 a.m. and neither father nor son has sold a single pack.

Vendors sell everything from boiled eggs to super glue to these cassette tapes at Habur gate in Turkey.

Gateway to prosperity

A 20-hour drive from cosmopolitan Istanbul, the Habur gate border crossing is in a poor but physically beautiful region of Turkey.

This is the valley of the Tigris River, which flows lazily through small, squat cities and broad cotton fields on its 1,150-mile journey toward Baghdad and the Persian Gulf.

To the southwest are the mountains of Syria; to the east and south are the snow-mantled Cudi range, forming part of the border between Turkey and Iraq.

During the Gulf War, hundreds of thousands of Kurds from northern Iraq trudged across these mountains in snow and ice, fearing Saddam Hussein would launch a gas attack against them as he did in 1988. Some of the refugees went to Canada and other Western countries; many returned to Iraq. The rest stayed in southeast Turkey, joining some 12-million Kurdish Turks who have fought -- sometimes violently -- to maintain their own language, customs and dress.

Locals joke that 98 percent of the southeast's population is Kurdish and the other 2 percent is officials -- Turkish soldiers and police who watch for any signs of Kurdish unrest. Although a 15-year state of emergency was lifted in November, no stranger can venture into Silopi or other towns without quickly being spotted and questioned by plainclothes cops.

The region's economy is inextricably tied to Habur gate, the only legal crossing point between Turkey and Iraq. When people and vehicles can move freely through Habur, the area does well. When movement is restricted, as it is now, the area suffers.

The gate was closed during the 1991 Gulf War but later reopened. Protected by British and American air patrols, the Kurds in northern Iraq began building their own government and taxing cross-border traffic. Turkish drivers hit on a way to offset the money they lost in taxes -- they outfitted their trucks with fiberglass tanks to carry diesel oil.

The practice violated U.N. economic sanctions against Iraq, but almost everyone turned a blind eye: the Kurds, because they were making money; the Turks, because a Kurdish leader in Iraq was giving them intelligence on Kurdish rebels in Turkey; and the United Nations, because the income generated helped compensate Turkey for the billions of dollars it lost when it cut off legal trade with Iraq as a result of the Gulf War. Suddenly, everyone in southeast Turkey seemed to be buying trucks and fiberglass tanks.

After years of working in the cotton fields, Halil Avonal decided to get in on the action. He sold two cows, five goats and the gold coins his kids had been given at birth. He pooled his money with four other families and together they bought a 1975 Leyland truck for 5-billion Turkish liras -- then about $7,700.

They painted two staring blue eyes on the front -- to ward off evil -- and YA-ALLAH on the driver's door. "Hey, God," is the loose translation -- a plea for help to do a hard job. Every fifth trip, Avonal would get his turn to drive into Iraq. There he would drop off produce or flour and load diesel oil. When he got back to Turkey, he would sell the diesel for 650,000 liras per liter, undercutting the regular gas station price by about 10 percent.

Each trip, Avonal made about $770, far more than he could have earned in the fields. Within eight months, he and his partners were doing so well they bought another truck.

But events would conspire against them.

In 1999, Kurdish rebels in Turkey called a cease-fire to the struggle that had claimed at least 35,000 lives. Turkey no longer needed intelligence help from the Kurds in Iraq, so it was less willing to tolerate the illegal diesel trade that was making them rich.

The Turkish government also faced pressure from Turkish petroleum dealers. They were angry that people like Avonal were selling diesel cheaper then they did.

The Turks got pressure, too, from the United States and Britain, concerned that the diesel imports were undermining the sanctions against Iraq.

So in September 2001, Turkey banned the diesel trade. Truckers could bring in only crude, under the tightly controlled conditions of a U.N. program that lets Iraq sell oil for food and medicine.

Most of the money Avonal and his partners made doing fiber had gone to pay off their truck loans. They couldn't afford to buy tankers and start carrying crude oil. And nobody wanted to buy Avonal's trucks because there no longer was any use for them.

Thousands of other men in southeast Turkey were in the same predicament. All they could do was park their trucks, leaving them to rust and slowly fall apart.

By one estimate, 51,000 trucks were taken off the road. Now they are everywhere -- behind homes, stores, gas stations, but mostly in huge truck graveyards lining the eight-mile highway from Silopi to Habur gate.

Avonal's two trucks sit near his house, paint flaking off, mud burying the tires up to the hubcaps.

"I paid 5-billion," he says, "and now I can't get 500,000."

Suude Avonal and her husband, Halil, unload dried cotton plants from the back of their truck at their home in Silopi, Turkey.

'Your brothers and sisters will die'

After he stopped transporting diesel, Avonal's luck only got worse. He had to have a stomach operation -- he stills owes friends who paid the bill -- and was unable to work for months.

His wife and children had little to eat but eggs and flat bread. In desperation, Avonal went to the market in Silopi last summer and asked a friend if he could have 25 cartons of cigarettes. Then he called aside Murat, his oldest son, and said:

"Your brothers and sisters will die, we will not be able to support them. So work with me and sell cigarettes."

To carry the cigarettes, Suude Avonal made her husband and son pouches from a heavy plastic tarp. The straps dug into their shoulders, so even though the temperature was well above 100, Avonal wore his tweed suit coat and Murat, his navy school blazer.

On the first day, they didn't sell a pack.

Eventually the truckers came to recognize Avonal by his coat and business picked up. On good days he sold five cartons. On some days he didn't make enough to pay the 45 cents it costs to ride a minibus between his house in Silopi and Habur gate.

Now, in January, the number of trucks waiting to cross the border is just half of what it was a year ago. A few truckers have stopped coming because they fear being stuck in Iraq if war breaks out. Some quit the business altogether because they made so little carrying crude -- just $150 for a five-day trip -- that it hardly covered their expenses.

Hundreds of other truckers are temporarily stranded at the Turkish port of Iskenderun, waiting for ships to arrive so the trucks can unload Iraqi oil bound for Europe.

Still, Avonal usually comes to the border every day, joining 10 or 15 other men who used to do fiber. A few, like him, sell cigarettes. Others peddle bread and tea from rickety pushcarts. One man converted his truck into a grocery store and started a cafe outside, with plastic chairs and tables. Those who can afford to eat are sheltered by a tarp, supported by poles stuck in Super Dizel cans filled with rocks.

"I am a university graduate and see, I am oiling trucks," says one young man, waving an oil gun before he scurries away.

In their wealth of free time, the men talk among themselves and with the truckers. To a man, they dislike Saddam Hussein, but fear getting rid of him will be a longer, deadlier affair than the United States thinks. As Kurds, they worry, too, that Hussein will attack Kurdish areas in southeastern Turkey as well as northern Iraq. No one has a gas mask.

Many of the men are also suspicious of America's motives. "They want to kill Islam for petrol," one says.

"Don't ask us whether Turkey will support the United States in a war," another adds. "Whatever I say won't change things -- Turkey has to do what the U.S. asks."

Avonal shifts his cigarette pouch from one shoulder to the other, and speaks up. He is slight of build and looks far older than 37; he has spent too many days smoking cheap cigarettes and squinting into the sun. But there is a wisdom in his voice that makes others stop and listen.

"Every day, we hear many things. If there is going to be war, let there be war. We just want everything to be clear. We want to know about our future. We're spending our lives with this threat all the time.

"For me, all I want is a normal job."

As the line of trucks disappears and the setting sun tints the snowy mountains a delicate pink, Avonal and his son start for home. It has been a good day -- in eight hours, Avonal sold three cartons of cigarettes and Murat, two.

They made a total of $3.

A prayer platform with the words "Please keep clean" scratched into the concrete provides respite at Habur gate.

-- Susan Taylor Martin can be reached at susan@sptimes.com

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