Iraqi Kurdistan Rejects Baghdad’s Demand to Surrender Airports

Turkey Will Suspend Flights as Iraq Pushes to Close Airspace

The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has confirmed that 92% of voters supported secession in this weeks referendum, and are rejecting demands from the central government to surrender all their airports.

The Abadi government gave the Kurds 72 hours to surrender all their airports or face the closure of their airspace to the international community. The deadline for this handover is Friday, though it unsurprisingly isn’t going to happen.

Iraq has subsequently been making the rounds issuing requests to the rest of the world asking them to comply with their demand to close Iraqi Kurdish airspace to punish the Kurds for keeping their airports.

Turkey, unsurprisingly given their hostility toward the Kurds, were Johnny-on-the-spot to endorse this idea, announcing that they will be forbidding all flights into Irbil and Sulaymaniyah starting on Friday.

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.