Kurds facing backlash after independence vote
IRBIL, Iraq — The backlash from an independence referendum approved by Iraq’s Kurds this week has left the northern Kurdish region increasingly isolated from Baghdad, and the crisis sparked by the vote appears poised to intensify.
The nonbinding referendum, in which the Kurds voted overwhelmingly in favor of independence from Iraq, was billed by the Kurdish leaders who spearheaded it as an exercise in selfdetermination that would set the region on the path to statehood, a dream central to Kurdish politics for decades.
Since Monday’s vote, the crisis seems to have pushed Iraqi Kurds further away from the central government in Baghdad and alienated countries such as Turkey and the United States, which have been key allies of the small, landlocked region.
Baghdad announced Thursday that Turkey — an indispensable trade partner to the region and once a key political ally — will now deal only with Iraq’s central government on oil sales. That could deprive the Kurdish region of more than 80 percent of its income.
Iraq’s government also has ordered international airlines to halt flights to and from the cities of Irbil and Sulaimaniyah starting Friday.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan urged Masoud Barzani, the leader of Iraq’s Kurdish administration, to be content with the region’s current semiautonomous status, enjoy its oil revenue and not drag it into an “adventure that is bound to end in chagrin.”
“Sit still! You are at the helm in northern Iraq. You have money, wealth and everything. You have oil,” Erdogan said Thursday, speaking at a police academy graduation ceremony in Ankara.
He said the region has “thrown itself into the fire” by holding the vote.
Erdogan’s government had forged close ties to Iraq’s Kurdish region but strongly opposes its moves toward independence, fearing it could inspire Turkey’s own Kurdish minority. It has threatened military action and economic sanctions against the region.
Iraq’s Kurds took their first steps toward autonomy with the backing of a no-fly zone enforced by the United States in the 1990s. In the fight against the Islamic State group, the U.S. launched the first air strikes against the extremists to protect Irbil, and today the capital of the Kurdish region is still home to one of the largest bases for the U.S.-led coalition.
But Washington strongly opposed the referendum, fearing it would distract from the fight against the militants and lead to the disintegration of Iraq.
After the referendum, the U.S. said it was “deeply disappointed” in the vote, pledging that its relationship with the region would not change, although adding that it is maintaining its support for a united Iraq.
One of the few countries to come out in favor of the vote was Israel, a state with few friends in the region. Newspapers in Baghdad and hard-line elements within the central government latched on to the news of Israel’s support, dubbing the Kurdish region “a second Zionist entity.”
In Irbil, hundreds of passengers, many of them foreigners, boarded flights out of the Kurdish region Thursday.