Fréderike Geerdink
What nobody takes into account in the KDP’s decision to not participate in the elections in the Kurdistan Region on 10 June, is Turkey’s influence, even though Turkey has a pretty tight grip on the KDP. Could it be the decision has a lot to do with increased tensions between Turkey and Iraq, which had surfaced a week earlier?
Sometimes some bizarre out of the box thinking leads to insights that struck you as lightning. When I heard about the KDP’s decision to withdraw from the Kurdistan Region elections of 10 June, I wondered what would be in it for the KDP. After all, the party, run by the Barzani family since the party was founded in the 1940s, doesn’t in the first place act in the interest of the Kurdistan Region or in the interest of Iraq’s unity, but in its own interest. That interest is defined by wealth and power.
Dispute
Since the rulings by the Iraqi Federal Supreme Court about the elections and especially about the electoral system in the Kurdistan Region, the KDP doesn’t control the elections anymore as it used to be. This was at the heart of the dispute with the Region’s second party, the PUK. Initially, the elections were supposed to be held in October 2022 but they were postponed because the PUK and KDP couldn’t agree on adjustments to the electoral system. The Federal Supreme Court has ruled in favour of the PUK’s wishes, even though abolishing the minority seats all together wasn’t on the PUK’s wish-list – only distributing them more fairly would have been more acceptable.
“What on earth is the KDP doing?” I thought. Are they giving up on the Kurdistan Region? That’s when my thinking spiralled out of control. Power and wealth for a feudal family like the Barzanis isn’t necessarily about new-fashioned power granted to them via the ballot box. It’s about forging alliances with established power for mutual benefits. Like when the Ottoman rulers and Kurdish clan leaders had agreed that Kurds didn’t have to send their sons to serve in the Ottoman army and didn’t have to pay taxes, in exchange for defending the rugged south-eastern borders of the Empire. The clans exploited the people and gained a lot of wealth, defending the borders (and their interests) with their own militias.
Parallel
An absurd parallel started shaping in my brain. What if the KDP was forging such an alliance with Turkey? What if they are giving up on ‘governing’ the Kurdistan Region – something they haven’t really been doing anyway – and submitting themselves to Turkey completely? They defend the borders of the Republic of Turkey with their own militia (read: peshmerga), are loyal to Erdoğan and the Republic and tell their people to vote for Erdoğan so the Kurdish political movement in Turkey is weakened. In exchange, they can continue to accumulate more wealth via oil sales, with corruption and by exploiting their constituents economically.
But just how absurd is this really? Bear with me.
Just a few days earlier, Turkey and Iraq in a joint statement declared they would fight terrorism together and announced that Iraq had ‘banned’ the PKK. Every analysis I read about it, considered that a win for both Iraq and Turkey. I wasn’t so sure. I think that actually Turkey is not happy with that ‘ban’ at all. What Turkey has been wanting from Iraq for many years, is for it to designate the PKK as a terrorist organisation, which Baghdad keeps refusing.
Kirkuk
A ‘ban’ means nothing. If anything, it will help Baghdad to demand Turkey to stop or at least decrease its air and land operations across the border into the Kurdistan Region and elsewhere within Iraq’s borders. While a terrorism designation would have given Turkey the possibility to increase such operations, military bases and occupations. That bothers Turkey, because its cross-border operations have since years superseded the aim of annihilating the PKK and are aimed at grabbing land it historically considers Turkish. That land is partly inside the Kurdistan Region, but also partly inside Iraq proper, most importantly Kirkuk and Mosul. Erdoğan said so himself.
Especially Kirkuk is interesting. It is part of the so-called disputed territories about which a referendum should have been held some twenty years ago to decide whether it belonged to Iraq proper or to the Kurdistan Region. The Kurds ruled it for a couple of years, but since 2017 (after Barzani’s blunder of a referendum about Kurdistan’s independence) Iraq is in control again
Nobody believes that referendum will ever be held anymore. Baghdad wants to hold on to Kirkuk, but of course to Mosul too.
Saddam
But Baghdad has its eyes on the Kurdistan Region too. It has been actively undermining the autonomous status of the Kurdistan Region for many years now, mostly via oil and finances. That Saddam Hussein is dead, doesn’t mean that today’s Baghdadi politicians have stopped dreaming about annexing Kurdistan again. By ‘banning’ the PKK, Baghdad has brilliantly robbed Turkey of an excuse to further occupy parts of the Kurdistan Region. Turkey’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and MIT chief İbrahim Kalın must have been banging their heads against the wall – maybe Erdoğan joined them.
So, while many analysts think the ‘joint statement’ means that Turkey and Iraq have come closer together, your favourite analyst thinks the tension between the neighbours has risen. And the KDP is on Turkey’s side. It has been on Turkey side for years. It is fully cooperating with Turkey against the PKK, and has made itself economically and politically dependent on Turkey. Pulling out of the Kurdistan elections is the next step, and directly connected to the far-reaching consequences of the joint statement.
Separatism
Of course, the KDP won’t literally secede and join Turkey. That would lead to war between Iraq and Turkey and that’s a bridge too far. They are just aligning themselves further. So, my thoughts weren’t spiralling out of control and into absurdity, they were in line with what has already been happening. Separatism, without redrawing the official borders.
But, I hear you ask, what if Erdoğan is no longer in power? Will his successor protect the Barzanis too? What if the AKP is no longer in power but the opposition CHP takes over? Well, no worries there, CHP loves the Ottoman dream of retaking control of lost lands across the border in Iraq (and Syria) too. And if the Barzanis do fall from grace? Well, part of the deal must be that they get to keep their private planes, so they can quickly withdraw into exile and spend their days in luxury in the mansions they bought to launder their money.
Fréderike Geerdink is an independent journalist. Follow her on Twitter https://twitter.com/fgeerdink or subscribe to her acclaimed weekly newsletter Expert Kurdistan https://frederikegeerdink.com/expert-kurdistan/.
