Turkey To Meet With Iran, Iraq Over Kurdish Independence Vote

Meanwhile, the military brass of Iran and Iraq met and held talks amid the controversy on the referendum. The exercises, involving tanks and armored vehicles, continued on Friday.

Following the independence vote, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi demanded the Kurdish region hand over all airports and land border crossings to federal government control.

The army’s statement did not specify where it happened or whether it was within the area of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).

Flights were canceled Friday from the global airport in Irbil, hours before a ban by the Iraqi government took effect, and officials in Baghdad said the military was preparing to take control of land borders. The U.S. raised the issue that such a referendum, “at this time”, may distract attention away from more serious security problems in the region. As for the Turkish government, President Recep Tayyib Erdogan is enraged and warns that this “adventure” (the independence referendum) “can only have a dark end”.

“The halt on global flights is now officially into effect”, Mawloud Bawa Murad, the Kurdish regional government’s transport minister, told AFP at Arbil airport, where he was visiting staff.

Besides canceling global flights, Baghdad has ordered the Kurdistan Region to hand over land borders and oil revenues to federal authorities. The KAR is landlocked, and Turkey is its main trading partner (about $10 billion of cross-border traffic a year).

The move is due to tensions over an independence referendum held this week in Iraq’s Kurdish region and disputed territories.

It would “negatively impact our daily life”, he said. The region is over 20 billion dollars in debt, and the state will need foreign investment to expand and diversify the economy.

Turkey faces armed opposition from Kurdish separatists at home.

The United States has said the Kurdish movement in Iraq could destabilize the area and hurt the war effort against IS forces.

Following the referendum, the USA said it was “deeply disappointed” in the vote, pledging its relationship with the region would not change, although adding that it is maintaining its support for a united Iraq. Even though Kurdistan has been producing 600,000 barrels of oil per day, an impressive feat for a landlocked region surrounded by hostile neighbors, low oil prices gravely impacted the development of its public sector that continues to remain weak and corrupt.

The airport dispute is the latest attempt by the KRG’s neighbours to isolate it from the outside world.

“With its independence initiative, the northern Iraq regional government has thrown itself into the fire”, he said in a speech to police officers at his palace in Ankara. And scary predictions about the future often don’t come to pass.

An extended suspension of flights would have significant consequences for the Kurds, who have turned Arbil into a regional transport hub that is home to a large worldwide community. By far the biggest population is in Turkey, which since 1984 has waged a campaign to defeat the PKK, which initially sought to create a breakaway state.