Erdogan threatens to turn off oil valve
ankara — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is threatening a military intervention in Iraq in response to the Iraqi Kurdish region’s referendum on independence from Baghdad.
Erdogan, speaking at a conference in the Turkish capital of Ankara as Iraqi Kurds voted in their region on Monday, said that Kurdish independence was unacceptable to his country and that this was a “matter of survival.”
He pointed to Turkish military exercises currently taking place on Turkey’s border with the Iraqi Kurdish region.
Erdogan said: “Our military is not (at the border) for nothing.” He also added: “We could arrive suddenly one night.”
He also said Turkey would take political, economic as well as military measures against Iraqi Kurds’ steps towards independence and also suggested that Turkey could halt oil flows from a pipeline from northern Iraq.
“Let’s see where — and through which channels — will they sell their oil. We have the valve. The moment we shut the valve, that’s the end of it,” said Erdogan.
The Turkish president said a border crossing with Iraq had been closed in one direction and that Turkey would shut it entirely.
The US State Department warned the Kurds last week that “holding the referendum in disputed areas is particularly provocative and destabilising.”
The referendum is taking place not only in the Kurdish autonomous region of Iraq, but also in areas in the north of the country where Kurdish forces have advanced against Daesh. These areas also have large non-Kurdish populations.
Turkey said it did not recognise the referendum and would view its outcome as null and void, adding that the Iraqi Kurdish government was threatening the peace and stability of Iraq and the whole region.
Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said his government was evaluating possible punitive steps regarding its border with northern Iraq and air space in response to the vote.
Ankara would make decisions in more direct talks with the Iraqi central government after the referendum and economic, political, diplomatic and military steps were being discussed, he told Turkish broadcasters.
Ankara’s forces are again fighting a Kurdish insurgency in Turkey following the collapse of a peace process.
Yildirim also said on Monday that officers and experts from Iraq’s army would join military exercises that Turkey launched along the border in an apparent warning to the Iraqi Kurds. —