Coming Kurdish Vote Could Change the Mid East & Oil Markets as We Know It

Jun 15, 2017 | Ellen R. Wald
View Original

The Kurds are a distinct ethnic group of people living in parts of Iraq, Turkey, Iran and Syria. Over the past thirty-five years they have been persecuted by Saddam Hussein and the Turkish government – who saw the Kurds as threats to Arab and Turkish nationalism – and have more recently fought against Islamic State and Assad’s Syria. The Kurds have long sought independence, but their more powerful neighbors, especially Turkey, fear that the establishment of a Kurdish state in northern Iraq will encourage their own Kurdish population (15-20%) to formally separate.

Since 2005, the Kurds in northern Iraq have governed themselves in a semi-autonomous fashion, run by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). In a bold step, the KRG recently announced on that September 25, 2017 the government will hold a referendum on Kurdish independence, essentially taking for itself the opportunity to create its own declaration of independence. Right now, the KRG has autonomy in the northern areas of Iraq where the population of Iraqi Kurds is greatest, even though that area is technically part of Iraq.

The potential future Kurdish state, however, would include some areas claimed by the Iraqi government in Baghdad, in addition to the territory regularly considered under the control of the Kurdish government in Erbil. Some of the cities that would be in a new Kurdish state include Kirkuk, Khanqin, Sinjar and Makhmor – all of which are currently occupied by Kurdish Peshmerga forces in the ongoing fight against Islamic State.