Ankara rejects Kirkuk participation in Kurdistan referendum

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan 24) – Turkey declared its rejection of a Tuesday decision by the Provincial Council of Iraq’s Kurdish-majority city of Kirkuk to participate in the Kurdistan Region’s independence referendum next month.

In a press release on its website, Turkey’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Kirkuk’s involvement in the Sep. 25 referendum was another “serious violation of the Iraqi Constitution in a chain of mistakes.”

It also reminded of Turkey’s rejection of an April decision by Kirkuk authorities to hoist the Kurdistan flag on official buildings.

Kurdish officials in Kirkuk said they had previously sent a letter to Baghdad requesting to hold a referendum to join Kurdistan that was initially scheduled for 2007, a right granted by Article 140 of the Iraqi Constitution ratified in 2005.

Ten years on, the referendum that would encompass other Kurdistani territories outside the jurisdiction of the Kurdistan Region is yet to take place.

The city and most of its environs came under the control of Kurdistan’s Peshmerga forces in the summer of 2014 when the Iraqi army fled in the face of a blitzkrieg by the now-collapsing Islamic State (IS).

This was the second time Kirkuk fell in Peshmerga’s hands since the 1991 Kurdish uprising against Saddam Hussein’s former Iraqi regime which retook it in less than a month, resulting in the expulsion of over 100,000 Kurds from the province.

Ankara also reiterated its opposition to the independence referendum, describing it “already a mistake on its own.”

The disputed status of the ethnically diverse Kirkuk has long been a primary concern for the Turkish state that claims a patronage for the city’s Turkmen minority.

Despite the harsh words by Ankara, the country’s leaders have ruled out any prospects of military action or economic embargo on the Kurdistan Region.

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany