Kurds voted in large numbers in an independence referendum in northern Iraq yesterday, ignoring pressure from Baghdad, threats from Turkey and Iran, and international warnings that the vote may ignite yet more regional conflict.
The vote organised by Kurdish authorities is expected to deliver a comfortable “yes” for independence, but is not binding.
However, it is designed to give Massoud Barzani, who heads the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), a mandate to negotiate the secession of the oil-producing region.
Turnout among 5.2mn eligible voters was 78%, the Kurdish Rudaw TV station said, and vote counting had started.
Final results are expected within 72 hours.
Voters were asked to say yes or no to the question: “Do you want the Kurdistan Region and Kurdistani areas outside the (Kurdistan) Region to become an independent country?”
For Iraqi Kurds — part of the largest ethnic group left stateless when the Ottoman empire collapsed a century ago — the referendum offered a historic opportunity despite intense international pressure to call it off.
“We have seen worse, we have seen injustice, killings and blockades,” said Talat, waiting to vote in the regional capital of Erbil, as a group of smiling women, in colourful Kurdish dress, emerged from the school showing their fingers stained with ink, a sign that they cast their ballot.
At Sheikh Amir village, near the Peshmerga front lines west of Erbil, long lines of Kurdish fighters waited to vote at a former school.
Most emerged smiling, holding up ink-marked fingers.
In the ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk, Kurds sang and danced as they flocked to polling stations. Opposition to the vote simmered among the Arabs and Turkmen who live alongside the Kurds in the northern Iraqi city and there were rumours that the vote would not take place in mixed areas.
Officials later ordered an overnight curfew.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi ordered security services “to protect citizens being threatened and coerced” in the Kurdish region, after unconfirmed reports that Arabs in a small town in eastern Iraq were compelled to vote yes.
Kurdish officials say no such coercion happened.
The Kurds also say the vote acknowledges their contribution in confronting Islamic State after it overwhelmed the Iraqi army in 2014 and seized control of a third of Iraq.
But with 30mn ethnic Kurds scattered across the region — mainly in Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria — Tehran and Ankara fear the spread of separatism.
President Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey could cut off the pipeline that carries oil from northern Iraq to the outside world, piling more pressure on the Kurds.
“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 Istanbul.”We have the tap. The moment we close the tap, then it’s done.”
The Iraqi army started “major manoeuvres” with the Turkish army at the border, the Iraqi defence ministry said, outlining co-ordinated measures by the two countries against the Kurds in retaliation for the referendum.
Turkey later took the Rudaw TV channel off its satellite service TurkSat, a Turkish broadcasting official told Reuters.
The US State Department warned the Kurds last week that “holding the referendum in disputed areas is particularly provocative and destabilising”.Pentagon spokesman Colonel Robert Manning told reporters yesterday: “We hope that it does not become a distraction and take away the focus on destroying ISIS (Islamic State) and beyond that obviously this (is) an issue for Iraq, you know, they are going to have to sort that out.”
The referendum was held not only in the Kurdish autonomous region of Iraq, but also in areas in the north of the country where Kurdish forces have advanced against Islamic State.
These areas also have large non-Kurdish populations.
Turkey said it did not recognise the referendum and would view its outcome as null and void, adding that the Iraqi Kurdish government was threatening the peace and stability of Iraq and the whole region.
Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said his government was evaluating possible punitive steps regarding its border with northern Iraq and air space in response to the vote.
Erdogan said traffic was only being allowed to cross from the Turkish side of the border into Kurdish areas of Iraq.
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