An expert panel hosted by Medya News has assessed the humanitarian, political and security outcomes of Turkey’s ongoing military operations in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). Hosted by freelance journalist Matt Broomfield, the discussion brought together journalists, analysts and other experts including from within the KRI itself to explore the broader ramifications of a conflict which is not only imperilling Kurdish civilians, but forms part of a broader restructuring of power in the KRI, Iraq, and the broader Middle East. You can listen to the full recording here or above.
NGO Community Peacemaker Teams (CPT) has been at the forefront of the conflict, documenting the displacement over 100 villages, threats to over 600 more, and the toll of a conflict which has killed over 100 civilians in recent years. Kamuran Osman, of the CPT, gave an overview of the conflict based on his recent trip to the border regions affected by the incursion, saying: “these are the people who have to pay the cost, and leave the area. When you visit, you can see burned black land… According to our data, 6,800 hectares of agricultural land have been burned. All the people who have been displaced, which is 184 families… have zero support.”
Osman further addressed the particular challenges faced by the region’s dwindling Christian minority, and by the Yazidi minority including in the nearby Shengal (Sinjar) region which is also affected by regular Turkish airstrikes.
Political activist Babakr Draey, currently the Cultural Director of the KRI’s second city Sulaymaniyah (Silêmanî), painted a picture of how an incursion reaching unprecedentedly deep into sovereign Iraqi territory amid muted opposition from the federal authorities in Baghdad and KRI’s Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) was reshaping regional politics.
Turkey “has angered the Kurdish people morally and politically about why the Kurdistan Regional Government is not trying to form an alliance against Turkey’s policy at the Iraqi level,” Draey said. Iraq’s government was facing opposition from the Iranian factions dominant in the country accusing it of proving unable to defend Iraqi sovereignty. “The presence of the Turkish army in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region will complicate US policy in Iraq,” he warned, since the US may be “forced to interfere as Turkey and Iran are the two largest countries in the region.”
Freelance journalist Fréderike Geerdink said she had spent many years working on the ground in the region, including embedded with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), as well as directly in the civilian regions currently being affected. “The PKK are at home in Kurdistan. These are their mountains too,” she said. “That’s why they are such good fighters against Turkey. Turkey is the invading army, and that’s important to understand – as also in Kurdistan in Turkey, which is according to international law being occupied by Turkey. They are occupying Kurdistan, building more permanent bases.”
In his contribution, analyst Kamal Chomani warned that “for the first time, the KDP is publicly accused of being a party to the Turkish offensive. It has created potential for a new civil war between the KDP and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).” Chomani went on to point to the particular role of Turkey’s economic interests in Iraqi Kurdistan, both in terms of its continued dominance of domestic Iraqi Kurdish markets and in terms of securing further access to Iraqi and Iraqi Kurdish oil resources.
“Turkey signed a fifty-year oil and gas contract with the KRI, or, better to say, the [KDP’s dominant] Barzani family. No-one knows what is in this contract. Turkey has become stronger and stronger in controlling the Kurdish economy and the lifeline of the Kurdish authorities in the region. They have become dependent on Turkey for oil exports,” he said. “So the KDP and Barzani family will never sacrifice their economic and political interests for greater Kurdish interests.”
