Iraqi Kurds Await Backlash After Millions Vote on Independence

Though the ballot was limited to areas under the control of the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq, the repercussions will be felt farther afield. More than 30 million Kurds are dispersed across the borders with Syria, Iran and Turkey with separatist ambitions of their own. Brent crude climbed to a two-year high on Monday amid concern that a backlash against the vote may disrupt Kurdish oil supplies, Bloomberg reported.

Iran and Turkey will likely unveil more measures “hitting diplomacy, business and trade,” Anthony Skinner, a director with U.K.-based forecasting company Verisk Maplecroft, said by email. The threat of military action will continue, though any armed intervention remains unlikely unless sectarian violence breaks out, he said.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hinted at a shutdown of oil exports the KRG relies on for revenue; Iran called the vote “illegal and illegitimate” and closed its borders with the Kurdish region at the request of Iraq. 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 Islamic State offensive of 2014.

Crude Threat

“Let’s see where the regional government of northern Iraq will make its crude oil flow, through which channels, and where it sells it from now on,” Erdogan said in Istanbul. The president also hinted at cross-border military operations: “We may arrive one night, suddenly.”

The ballot took place in three provinces ruled by the KRG in northern Iraq as well as in disputed areas around the oil hub of Kirkuk. It asked 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 was almost certain to be “yes.” Turnout was 78 percent, Al Arabiya reported, citing the KRG’s electoral commission. Kurdish officials said 3.9 million people were registered to vote.

“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, said before the vote 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.

“Barzani is playing a dangerous game of poker,” said Skinner at Verisk Maplecroft. “He is counting on Turkey, Iran and the U.S. not being able to sustain a united stance on pressuring the KRG.”

Forcing Talks

Some analysts have suggested Barzani is more interested in forcing the Iraqi government to resolve long-standing arguments over territory and oil revenue than pursuing a complete split. Kurdish businessman Shaswar Abdulwahid Qadir, who led a “Not for Now” campaign against the referendum, said it was being held to distract from domestic problems, including dire economic conditions caused by the plunge in crude oil prices and an influx of refugees fleeing Islamic State.

“The Iraqi government is not going to stand still and watch Kirkuk’s integration into Kurdistan, and the mobilization that we’re seeing is an Iraqi effort to reassert control over the contested territory,” said Ayham Kamel, director of the Middle East and North Africa at Eurasia Group. Any ethnic clashes “might become a pretext for much wider mobilization,” he said.

Turkey fears the independence vote could set back its own campaign to stamp out a Kurdish insurgency it’s been battling for three decades, but its officials have also expressed concern that a military response from Baghdad could trigger an exodus of Iraqi Kurds toward Turkey.

The vote was “laying the ground for hot conflict,” Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said.