Spokesman for Turkey's Ruling Party: You Know, If the Kurds Want to Declare Their Own Free State, It's Fine By Us

Well that about wraps it up for Iraq.

The good news is, however, that the Kurds will have their own state.

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region—The Kurds of Iraq have the right to decide the future of their land, said Huseyin Celik, a spokesman for Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) on Friday.

“The Kurds of Iraq can decide for themselves the name and type of the entity they are living in,” Celik told Rudaw in an interview to be published soon.

The AKP is the party of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan under whom Ankara and Erbil have built strong economic and diplomatic relations.

In case Iraq gets partitioned, said Celik, “the Kurds, like any other nation, will have the right to decide their fate.”

Celik believes that Iraq is already headed towards partition thanks to “Maliki’s sectarian policies.”

If you've forgotten, Bush did not consider any plans for partitioning Iraq, or permitting the Kurds to secede, because Turkey insisted that Kurdistan must remain, at least as a legal, nominal matter, merely a subdivision of Iraq, and could not be its own state.

I don't know why they've changed their position now.

Thanks to @drewmtips.

posted by Ace at 08:46 PM

| Access Comments