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About 73 percent of eligible voters have already cast their ballots in an independence referendum, currently being held in Iraqi Kurdistan, local media reported Monday.
The polling stations opened earlier in the day not only in the autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan but also in the disputed areas officially controlled by Baghdad.
According to the Rudaw broadcaster, the city of
Kirkuk, the administrative center of Iraq's Kirkuk province, which is not a part of the autonomous region, has also shown a large voter turnout.
Iraqi Kurdistan independence referendum in the end of August,
the authorities of the province of Kirkuk voted in favor of joining the vote for Iraqi Kurdistan's referendum. Baghdad has spoken out against the vote, questioning its legality.
Comment: Iraq's Federal Supreme Court ruled the referendum
illegal on Sept. 18. The commander of the Peshmerga said that his forces are in a state of combat readiness should they be attacked by any party.
Barzani, for his part, doesn't think it will come to that. He also expressed gratitude for Russia's statements on the vote, namely Lavrov's stated hope that the conflict will be resolved "through dialogue, national accord, and compromise."
The Iraqi parliament
passed laws to investigate oil revenues and bank accounts of all Kurdish politicians, and to prosecute any officials or state employees who participated in the referendum. Iraqi PM Abadi has ordered his security forces to protect minority groups threatened by the Kurdish referendum. They may need it: KRG police reportedly
threatened internally displaced Yazidis in a UN camp to vote "yes" to the referendum or face eviction.
Turkish PM Yildirim also
said his country hasn't yet ruled out terminating oil transit from Iraqi Kurdistan, saying national security might outweigh the $300-500 million in potential economic losses. Turkey is also considering
sanctions. Both Turkey and Iran have apparently
closed their land borders with Iraqi Kurdistan:
Meanwhile, Turkey has also announced that it will only be dealing with the Iraqi central government on issues regarding borders, air travel and oil. This would be a decisive blow to Kurdish separatist ambitions as the potential landlocked state relies on Turkey to export its oil. In addition, Turkey have suspended its training program with the Peshmerga, the Kurdish militia, in Bashiqa.
Iran meanwhile have also been conducting military drills on its border with Iraqi Kurdistan. This comes as only yesterday Iran closed its airspace and all flights to the autonomous region, as reported by Fort Russ News.
Erdogan warned of a possible Turkish
military action:
Erdogan said Turkey's neighbors "should not expect us to turn a blind eye." "We will continue to work in accordance with the territorial integrity of Iraq," he said in a tweet. He added that with regards to Iraq and Syria "who pose a threat to our country... we use all options in front of us."
Erdogan's comments come on the back of a Turkish Foreign Ministry statement, which promised that "we will take every measure that emanates from international law and from the authority granted by the Grand National Assembly of Turkey."
Responding to the federated Kurdish region's attempt at a mandate for independence from Iraq, Erdogan said Turkey could block petrol coming from the region.
...
"After this, let's see through which channels the northern Iraqi regional government will send its oil, or where it will sell it," Erdogan said in a speech delivered Monday. "We have the tap. The moment we close the tap, then it's done."
Notably, the only country to support the referendum so far is Israel.
Update: Turnout was around 78%. Kirkuk declared an overnight curfew. Maliki called the vote a "declaration of war against the unity of the people of Iraq".
Update (Sept. 26): Unsurprisingly, Barzani says the
yes vote was overwhelming. Around 92% of 3.45 million ballots cast voted for an independent Kurdistan. Official results will be released on Thursday, but so far it's looking like
Kirkuk and Sinjar regions voted most favorably yes, at around 90%. Only 51% voted yes in the city of Sulaymaniyah.
Baghdad has given the Kurdish leadership
three days to hand over control of airports in the region and called on states to cease cooperating with the Kurdish oil sector. Similar to how U.S. meddling in Turkey only pushed the country closer into the arms of U.S. enemies (Russia, Iran), the Kurdish vote is pushing Iraq and Turkey closer together (Iran too). Iraq and Turkey launched
joint military drills today. Turkey's EU Affairs Minister warned that the inclusion of Kirkuk could have negative
consequences:
"To include Kirkuk in the poll is another suggestion from [Kurdistan's President Masoud] Barzani to turn Iraq into another bloodbath ... The referendum, contrary to what Barzani claims, will not bring stability to the region nor be useful for Kurds' future. It will be a blow, not just to Kurdish people, but to the other ethnic minorities willing to live together in Iraq," Celik said, as quoted by the Anadolu news agency.
Update (Sept. 27): Official results: 72% voter turnout (3.35 million people), 92.73% yes. Iraqi PM Abadi has demanded the
annulment of the vote, saying it will not engage in any talks over the results - dialogue will only take place within the framework of the existing Iraqi constitution. He added, "We will impose Iraqi law in the entire region of Kurdistan under the constitution."
The Iraqi government has prepared several measures for dealing with the referendum, including authorization to PM Haider to
deploy troops to Kirkuk province. Additional
measures: retaking disputed oil fields in Kirkuk and elsewhere, holding accountable all KRG and Iraqi officials responsible for organizing the referendum, closing all KRG borders, preventing oil exports from the region, and closing all consulates there.
The Parliament assured that the Iraqi officials who did not participate in staging the referendum, have their jobs secured, while obliging itself to grans security of all internally displaced people, and gave them the rights to return to their places of origin.
The Parliament has explicitly pointed out that social interaction with the citizens of Kurdish origin must remain unaffected by political situation in the country and the referendum results.
Iraq's Civil Aviation Authority has
banned all international flights to and from Iraqi Kurdistan's two international airports, allowing only domestic flights.
On their part, the Kurds say they are
ready for negotiations (which Iraq has already rejected, until the results are annulled):
"This [the independence referendum] is an exclusively peaceful process, there's no threat from our side...in the future, we of course support sitting down at a negotiating table and peacefully resolving territorial disputes and the division of natural resources. The government of Iraqi Kurdistan is quite ready for this," [representative of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) in Russia Hoshawi Babakr] told reporters during a press conference in Moscow.
Kirkuk's governor says the regions Kurdish security forces
will not allow the Iraqi army to enter the province. Iraq's Popular Mobilization Units say they are ready - alongside Iraqi forces - to
defend minorities from the Kurdish regime.
Russia's
position: "The Russian party believes it to be of utmost importance to avoid anything that risk to further complicate and destabilize the Middle East, which is already overloaded by conflict situations." It continues to
support the "sovereignty and territorial integrity" of Iraq:
"Moscow respects national aspirations of Kurds," the ministry said in a statement. "We believe that all points at issue between Iraq's federal authorities and the leadership of the Kurdish Autonomous Region may and should be solved through a constructive and respectful dialogue aimed at developing a mutually acceptable formula of co-existence as part of a unified Iraqi state."
Update: Five countries have signed on to the flight ban: Jordan, Turkey, UAE, Egypt and Lebanon. And as mentioned in an earlier update, the referendum has not only nudged Iraq even closer to Turkey, but also
to Iran:
The Iraqi Defense Ministry today announced that the Chief of Staff of the Iraqi Army, Lieutenant General Othman Al Ghanmi, is on an official visit to Iran, amid the escalation of tensions because of the independence referendum in the Iraqi province of Kurdistan.
"Army's Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General Osman Al Ghanmi heads a high-level military delegation that has visited Iran to coordinate efforts on dealing with the Kurdistan Regional Government provocations, and to boost military cooperation between the countries", the Ministry said in a brief statement posted on its official Facebook page.
Kirkuk is
digging in its heels:
Kirkuk province, Iraq's disputed area officially controlled by Baghdad, but de-facto remaining under the control of the Kurdish authorities does not obey Iraq's government or the parliament, province's Governor Najmiddin Karim told Sputnik on Wednesday.
...
"We are still in touch with Baghdad. In regards to this decision [on Karim's resignation] - is illegal and unconstitutional. The laws on Kirkuk are pretty clear - the province is not in subjection to the prime minister or parliament. Because the Kirkuk governor was not entrusted by the parliament and thus the latter does not have the right to dismiss him," Karim said.
Update (Sept. 28): Iranian FM Zarif
says that Iran believes the referendum was a "major strategic mistake", but that Iran will remain "eternal friends of the Kurds". As Sputnik points out, Iran has a large Kurdish population with which it maintains decent relations, and has a long-standing relationship with Iraq's Kurds. After 2014, the IRGC even cooperated with Kurdish Peshmerga in their fight against ISIS. But this is a step too far for the Iranian government.
According to the Iraq PM, Turkey has
agreed to "shut off the valve" and deal solely with Baghdad on oil exports.
Iraq's central bank has
ended its activities with the Kurdish government, revealing that the KRG failed to make any attempts to return $5 billion that were stolen from central bank branches in 2014. The bank had been willing to overlook this in the interests of national unity, but no longer.
Iraqi Kurdistan's KDP says it
hopes to determine a candidate for its party's presidency within a week.
Comment: You know something interesting is going on when being "too smart" and being irrational are indistinguishable.