Iraq’s Kurds said on Friday a referendum on independence will go ahead despite warnings internationally that a vote in favour of secession could trigger conflict with Baghdad at a time when the fight against Islamic State is not yet won.
The Kurds have played a major role in the eight-month-old U.S.-backed campaign to defeat the hardline Sunni insurgents in the Nineveh province around their de-facto capital Mosul.
Baghdad disapproves
Baghdad’s Shia-led government has rejected any move by the mostly Sunni Muslim Kurds to press unilaterally for independence, insisting that any decision about the country’s future should involve other parts. But Hoshiyar Zebari, a former Iraqi Foreign and Finance Minister and now a senior adviser to Kurdistan Regional Government President Massoud Barzani, said the decision to hold the vote on September 25 was irreversible.
Turkey’s Foreign Ministry called the plan a “terrible mistake” on Friday and said that Iraq’s territorial integrity and political unity was a fundamental principle for Ankara. The country's majority Shia community mainly lives in the south while the Kurds and Sunni Arabs inhabit two corners of the north. The centre around Baghdad is mixed.
The Kurds have their own armed force, the Peshmerga, which in 2014 prevented Islamic State from capturing Kirkuk.
