In a surprisingly positive development, a spokesman for Turkey's ruling party said that Kurds in Iraq have the right to self-determination. This reverses decades of Turkish opposition to an independent Kurdistan.
The statement has been relatively overlooked so far, but could signal a shift in policy as Turkey has long been a principal opponent of Kurdish independence, which would mean a partitioning of Iraq.
"The Kurds of Iraq can decide for themselves the name and type of the entity they are living in," Huseyin Celik, a spokesman for the Justice and Development Party, told the Kurdish online news outlet Rudaw last week. ...
"The Kurds, like any other nation, will have the right to decide their fate," Celik told Rudaw, in a story that was picked up by CNN's Turkish-language outlet.
Even more significant than this statement by a leading Turkish politician, Turkey is making deals with Kurdistan as though it were already an independent state:
Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan have recently forged a strong bond over oil, much to the chagrin of Iraq, which claims that Baghdad has sole authority over oil in Kurdistan. Turkey recently signed a 50-year energy deal with Iraqi Kurdistan’s semi-autonomous government to export Kurdish oil to the north, and Kurdistan has increased its exports this week despite the insurgency by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
Remember when Joe Biden advocated for the partition of Iraq into three loosely federated quasi-states, one Sunni, one Shi'ite, and one Kurdish? That may be about to happen -- or perhaps even full legal independence for each region -- and there are good reasons why. As Adam Taylor writes
on the Washington Post blog:
Iraq broadly falls into distinct regions that line up with ethnic or religious groups: A Kurdish north, a Sunni middle, and a Shiite south. Iraq's modern borders were defined by its time in the Ottoman Empire and subsequent years as a British mandate, and you can make an argument that they are "artificial." Many felt that Saddam Hussein and his minority Sunni government had only been able to maintain a centralized, national government with repressive, dictatorial tactics. That wasn't compatible with a modern democracy, and the fear was that if regions weren't given more power, conflict was inevitable.
Given recent events, those fears look justified. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), an Islamist extremist group birthed from al-Qaeda, has taken over many of the Sunni areas of Iraq, including the major city of Mosul. Baghdad's majority-Shiite government, led by Nouri al-Maliki, appears unable to force its own army to face them on the battlefield – and worse still, their policies appear to have led many moderate Sunnis to grudgingly accept ISIS. Meanwhile, the Kurds have taken the northern city of Kirkuk, one of the few remaining disputed areas (the Kurds have long enjoyed virtual autonomy). On Friday, Shiite militias began gathering to take up arms.
It looks like those who advocated the partition of Iraq had the right idea all along. Iraq never should have been a single geopolitical unit. Maintaining it as one country was unrealistic and untenable. As the independence of Kurdistan appears increasingly likely, with Turkish approval, and the Sunni and Shi'ite regions fight a civil war, it's time for the United States government to change policy and begin supporting a logical, peaceful partition of Iraq into three states. Perhaps if policymakers had
listened to Joe Biden when he suggested this idea a few years ago, Iraq wouldn't be in the mess it's in now.
