Dr. Mahmoud Othman, a prominent politician from Iraqi Kurdistan, has stated that the administrations of Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria are involved in a joint plan to crush the political will and identity of the Kurdish people residing in these countries.
A member of the Interim Iraq Governing Council from 2003-04, a former member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) Political Bureau, and co-founder of the Kurdistan Socialist Democratic Party, Othman drew attention to the intensification of both Turkey’s and Iran’s incursions into the Iraqi Kurdistan and the former’s increasing attacks in the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES).
Speaking to Roj News, he said there were similarities between the policies and objectives of the four countries concerning the Kurds:
“Officials from Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria have had meetings recently. The officials of the Turkish National Intelligence Agency went to Syria first, then the parties met in Iraq. (…) The Turkish forces have been killing Kurds, destroying crops and farmlands during its incursions within the past six months. Iran demands that the Kurdish fighters from East Kurdistan are denied sanctuary in Iraqi Kurdistan. The Baghdad administration is in tune with Turkey and Iran. The United States and the Kurdistan Regional Government, on the other hand, are silent before the attacks of Turkey and Iran, and so are international institutions. This is a dangerous situation for the Kurds.”
Indicating that the object of Turkey’s attacks wasn’t the presence of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) as the former claimed, Othman said it was actually just the Kurds themselves: “They’re against the presence of the Kurds in Rojava [North and East Syria], in Iraqi Kurdistan, in any part of the world. The Kurds are all the same in the eyes of the Turkish president Erdoğan; they’re just bad. We see how they’ve been arresting elected deputies and governors from the People’s Democratic Party.”
Othman emphasised that Turkey wasn’t only hostile against Kurds, but it was also incapable of tolerating the existence of Iraqi Kurdistan as a federal governmental entity: “Nowadays, they’re not mentioning it too much because of their commercial interests; because of the oil they’re buying. Yet, Erdoğan always says he’s not in favour of Kurds having a political status, either in Iraq or Syria.”
Othman indicated that Turkey and its proxy forces were now preparing for an attack against Rojava, and they were trying to get Russia’s consent over this. “They’re involved in a major plan against the Kurds,” he said. “And Turkey is on the frontline in this plan.”
