Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan may spark another regional war in the Middle East in order to stay in power, the Kurdistan National Congress (KNK) has warned. The new statement from the umbrella Kurdish political organisation, which represents Kurdish political and diplomatic interests on the global stage, warns that the region has become the “epicentre” of global conflict and urges a fair hearing for the Kurdish-proposed “solution” to the crisis engendered by Erdoğan’s politics.
Erdoğan has outlined plans for an imminent military campaign against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI), vowing to permanently end the Kurdish guerrillas by the summer. Turkey regularly carries out air strikes in Iraq’s Kurdistan Region and has established several military bases on Iraqi soil to support its controversial cross-border offensives.
This proposed operation, which will take place in coordination with Baghdad and the Iraqi Kurdish authorities, could seriously destabilise the region, the KNK warn. “Erdoğan’s planned war could therefore turn into a war with regional and global repercussions. Kurds in Syria, Iran, Turkey and abroad will not remain silent. Arab countries, as well as Iran, may not accept Turkish aggression in their region and may choose to respond.”
Such an invasion would constitute an “occupation” of Iraqi Kurdistan, the KNK stated, noting that Turkey has killed 170 civilians in the region since 2015, using airstrikes and allegedly prohibited chemical weapons.
“The long-term goal of the attacks is to destroy the autonomous status of the Kurdistan Region and to secure Turkish control of strategic territory in northern Iraq, including important regions around Mosul and Kirkuk,” the KNK added, stressing that any such operation would imperil Kurdish unity and therefore provide a boon to hostile state actors in the region.
Erdoğan is willing to imperil the region in order to strengthen his grip on domestic power and secure economic gains to counter the devastation brought about by his economic policy, the KNK reiterated. “Erdoğan’s government remains uninterested in a political solution.”
The KNK linked the proposed operation to recent defeats for Erdoğan’s governing coalition in local elections. “As they have after past electoral setbacks in 2015 and 2019, they are choosing to escalate military operations against the Kurds in order to galvanise nationalist support and find pretexts to suppress all dissent.”
In particular, the KNK point to the ‘Iraq Development Road’ project, which “envisages the construction of a 1,200 km railway and road link from the Iraqi port of al Faw in Basra through Kurdish areas to the Turkish border in order to facilitate an urgently needed economic upturn.”
Turkey “appears to be making the success of the project dependent on the destruction of the PKK and the creation of a security zone,” the KNK stated, noting that this project is being used as a pretext to attack distant Kurdish regions some 30 kilometres from the development road’s mooted route.
“Under the guise of the Turkish-Iraqi development road, Erdoğan wants to achieve his real goal of completing Turkey’s occupation of northern Iraq and severing the Kurdistan Region from North and East Syria,” the KNK said. “This raises the question of whether the Iraqi government will tolerate such Turkish actions in the name of better relations and whether the economic impact of a larger war in Kurdistan will make the alleged benefits of the route worthless.”
In response to these proposed “violation[s] of international law, ethnic cleansing and demographic change”, the KNK urge dialogue and a negotiated political settlement spearheaded by jailed Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan, who has been held incommunicado for over three years.
