Leaders in Baghdad and Erbil (Hewler) officially sanctioned Turkish attacks on Iraqi Kurdistan, following Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s visits to the Iraqi capital and the country’s autonomous Kurdistan Region last week. Iraq also recently banned the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) but stopped short of aligning with Erdoğan’s demand to prescribe it a terrorist group.
Zagros Hiwa, of the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK), told the New Arab: “The deal is an attempt by the fascist Turkish state under dictator Erdoğan to get the Iraqi authorities in line with the genocidal policies of the Turkish state against the Kurds. The media fuss about the deal serves to conceal the very truth of it: Iraqi authorities have formally approved the invasion of their land by the Turkish state; that is, they have made serious concessions to Turkey as to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Iraq.”
The KCK is an umbrella organisation of both armed and unarmed Kurdish groups, which aims to defend the rights of Kurdish minorities and bring about democratic confederalism throughout Kurdish-controlled regions.
Hiwa continued, emphasising the significance of last week’s deal. He told TNA: “This deal equals to the invasion of Cyprus and the annexation of Syria’s Iskenderun province to Turkey.”
The agreement would leave an area of northern Iraq, roughly the size of Lebanon, open to an Iraqi-state-sanctioned attack by the Turkish military, Hiwa said. “According to this deal, Turkey would have the right to invade an area of 300 km long and 40 km wide inside the Iraqi territory.”
He further highlighted that the Turkish military has already “built more than one hundred military bases in Iraqi Kurdistan.”
According to Hiwa, the deal will bring Erdoğan one step closer to his openly stated objective of gaining Turkish control of the Mosul province of Iraq. This ambition is in line with Erdoğan’s neo-Ottoman foreign policy aims.
Hiwa told TNA that the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) was behind last week’s agreement. He argues that the KDP had persuaded the Iraqi government to agree to Erdoğan’s deal, in return for Turkey signing several infrastructure agreements, including on water, oil and the construction of the $17bn Iraqi Development Road. Iraq’s foreign ministry is currently headed by Fouad Hussein, a key member of the KDP.
Hiwa maintains: “The KDP, which has betrayed the Kurdish cause to win Erdoğan’s favour, has encouraged, persuaded, and blackmailed the Iraqi authorities to do the same.”
He concluded by asserting his determination to resist Turkey’s attacks. He stated, defiantly: “From our viewpoint, these operations are a part of the genocidal policies of the Turkish state against the Kurds, and we are determined to defend our people.”
