Iraq, Turkey Reject Kurds Offer to Suspend Independence Push

Iraq PM Demands Kurds Totally Abandon Secession

Both Iraq’s central government and the government have neighboring Turkey have publicly rejected an offer by Iraqi Kurdistan to suspend its independence effort in return for an end to ongoing military offensives against Kurdish territory. Both insist the offer is “insufficient.”

On September 25, Kurdish voters passed a referendum to secede from Iraq by over 92%. Iran and Turkey have since been in talks with Iraq’s central government on resisting the effort militarily, and in the last two weeks Iraqi Kurdistan lost all territory gained in the ISIS War.

Iraqi Prime Minister Hayder Abadi says he won’t accept anything short of the outright abandonment of Kurdish independence ambition and the outright cancellation of the referendum and its results.

Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu concurred, saying that the Turkish government wants an immediate decision to declare the referendum null and void. Turkey has expressed particular fury at the idea of Iraqi Kurdish independence because of their own substantial Kurdish minority.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.