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| Iraq | |
| Barzani says Kurdistan nation should have its own state | |
| 2010-07-17 | |
BAGHDAD / Aswat al-Iraq: President of Iraq’s Kurdistan region said that the Kurdistan nation should have its own state like the Turkish, Persian and Arab nations, according to the Hürriyet Daily News.
“I am against the use of violence, but the Kurdish nation, as its legitimate right, should have its own state like the Turkish, Persian and Arab nations,” Iraqi Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani told an Egyptian television broadcaster, daily Milliyet reported Thursday. “We are not claiming we are stronger than them, but we have nothing less than those nations.” Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Burak Özügergin told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review that Turkey’s approach toward Iraq remains unchanged. “I haven’t heard the statements made by Mr. Barzani, but there has been no change in Ankara’s views or attitude toward Iraq’s territorial integrity,” Özügergin told the Daily News on Thursday. Turkey has repeatedly stressed its commitment to Iraq’s territorial integrity and political unity while at the same time working to improve its relationship with the Iraqi Kurdish leadership in the north in recent years. Ankara, however, continues to criticize Barzani for not doing enough to help Turkey fight the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK. Despite the disagreements over the fight against the PKK, the status of the oil-rich northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk and the sharing of oil revenues, Barzani’s visit to Turkey last month was deemed an important development for regional balance, especially amid the Obama administration’s plans to pull out troops from Iraq. | |
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #4 I think it's more of the, "we are this tribe and you are that." No national identity and more of the same, "if you're not us, then you are an enemy," which relates back to the tribal, competition thing. |
| Posted by: miscellaneous 2010-07-17 10:47 |
| #3 Insensitve, I for one await the dawn of the Russet Empire. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2010-07-17 10:36 |
| #2 Long overdue. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2010-07-17 04:10 |
| #1 Call me insensitive but maybe we should take a piece of Washington, Oregon, and Utah and combine them into Potatostan. And maybe have an East Potatostan in Maine. It serves no practical purpose for Kurds to continue to agitate for a separate country any more than it would be for Quebec to do so. All it does is keeps the country divided and continues to cause friction with neighbors. Yes, they are Kurds. But they are also Iraqis. I only hope that Barzani's comments were meant for internal consumption and were feeding on the emotions of the Kurds but this is not really productive (except for politicians who want that emotional appeal for votes, what is best be damned) for the long term interests of the Kurds. It sends a message of "we really don't ever intend to integrate fully with the rest of Iraq and will always consider ourselves separate". |
| Posted by: crosspatch 2010-07-17 01:24 |