Iraqi Kurds vote in referendum as Turkey hints at warnings

Bloomberg

Iraqi Kurds went to the polls on Monday for a referendum on independence, ignoring dire warnings from Baghdad as well as neighbours fearful that the vote will bolster the cause of Kurdish nationalism across the region.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan delivered his gravest threat to date after balloting began, hinting at a shutdown of oil exports that the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government relies on for revenue. Turkey also announced joint military exercises with Iraq, while Iran called the vote “illegal and illegitimate” and said it had closed its borders with the Kurdish region at the request of Iraq’s government.
“Let’s see where the regional government of northern Iraq will flow its crude oil, through which channels and where it sells it from now on,” Erdogan said in Istanbul on Monday. The president also hinted at cross-border military operations: “We may arrive one night, suddenly.”
Iraqi authorities also plotted their response. In Baghdad, parliament approved draft legislation ordering the closure of borders with Kurdistan, the return of disputed oil fields and the deployment of troops to areas under Kurdish control since the IS offensive of 2014. The proposals aren’t final and could be reworded in coming days, lawmaker Badr Al-Fahal said.
The ballot is taking place in three provinces ruled by the KRG in northern Iraq as well as in disputed areas around the oil hub of Kirkuk. It asks one question—“Do you want the Kurdistan region and the Kurdistani areas outside the region’s administration to become an independent state?”—and their answer is almost certain to be “yes.” Voting ended at 6 pm local time.
Though that outcome wouldn’t automatically trigger secession or even immediate demands for it, the repercussions would be felt far beyond Iraq and have the potential to open up yet another Middle East conflict. More than 30 million Kurds are dispersed across the borders with Syria, Iran and Turkey, which face secessionist movements among their Kurdish own minorities.

‘Injustice’
“We lived for this day,” Majda Mohammed Ali, a 60-year-old civil engineer, said as she left a polling station in Erbil, which was covered with flags and banners on a public holiday for the vote. “We don’t want our children to suffer the injustice that we did.”
The Iraqi Kurds’ president, Massoud Barzani, told a press conference that their partnership with Iraq had failed. He called for calm and said he was ready for “very long” talks with the government in Baghdad—possibly lasting years— on issues from borders to oil exports and water once votes have been counted. Iraq has declared the vote unconstitutional.
“The risk of confrontation is big, and nobody will benefit from a new round of war,” said Kawa Hassan, director of the Middle East and North Africa programme at the EastWest Institute in Brussels. It would have been better for the Kurds to enter into negotiations with Baghdad, as proposed by the US and the UN, than to hold the vote, he said.
About 98 percent of Iraqi Kurds voted for independence in a 2005 referendum, though it was arranged by activists without official approval and did not result in statehood.