Friday, Jul 04, 2014
The current chaos in Iraq has given the Kurds in their autonomous regional areas a dangerous opportunity to seek independence and the formal dissolution of Iraqi borders. This ‘nuclear option’ means that the Kurds would give up on Iraq and seek a new future with their new allies in Turkey. This opportunism would be better replaced by a constructive commitment to helping Iraq have a more inclusive central government and then encouraging Baghdad to implement its constitution and allow full devolution to all Iraq’s regions.
The Kurds have taken quick advantage of the chaos caused by the terrorists of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, Isil, and have gained complete control over the previously split city of Kirkuk in the heart of the oil-producing region in the north of Iraq. But the president of the Kurdish Regional Government, Masoud Barzani, went a lot further when he announced that the Kurds will hold a referendum on going for full independence in a few months. Barzani told the BBC that “I have said many times that independence is a natural right of the people of Kurdistan. All these developments [in Iraq] reaffirm that, and from now on we will not hide that the goal of Kurdistan is independence.”
The Kurdish referendum has been supported by Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, who sees a useful personal electoral advantage in the upcoming Turkish presidential elections, when he faces a close vote against the opposition candidate and he will need the support of the minority third force of the Turkey’s Kurdish party. In addition, as the Turks have watched with horror the collapse of Iraq and Syria and the frightening growth of dangerous sectarianism, it has led them to abandon their long-standing hatred of the Kurds in order to have some kind of rational government on their southern border.
It remains to be seen how the centralised Turkish and Iranian governments will respond to any demand for a similar vote from their own Kurdish populations to join the Kurds of Iraq in their mini-state.
By Gulf News
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