Iraqi–Kurdish conflict

Iraqi soldiers joined Turkish troops for military exercises in southeast Turkey near the border with Iraq on Sept. 26 as the two countries coordinate steps in response to the Iraqi Kurdish independence referendum.

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım on June 9 called a plan by the autonomous Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) to hold a referendum on independence "irresponsible", adding that the region had enough problems at the moment.

Photo: AP

Iraq's Kurdish region will hold an independence referendum in September, the autonomous region's government announced in a statement. The move is likely to be opposed by Baghdad which has long voiced its opposition to Kurdish secession.

Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region on June 8 announced it would hold a referendum on independence, in a move the central government in Baghdad is likely to oppose strongly.

"I am pleased to announce that the date for the independence referendum has been set for Monday, Sept. 25, 2017," Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani said on Twitter.

The discussions the president of the Regional Kurdish Administration (KRG) in northern Iraq, Massoud Barzani, had in Turkey were noteworthy. Barzani met Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım a short while ago in Munich. On his return, he met President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Istanbul and then met Yıldırım again in Ankara. 

Syrian Kurdish Peshmerga fighters will return to Syria after receiving training in northern Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdish region, a Kurdish politician said on Jan. 24.

Architect Daniel Libeskind makes the most famous genocide monuments in the world. On April 11, he invited journalists to his office in New York and told them that it was time to open a "Kurdish national identity museum."  I was curious why the architect would do such a thing out of the blue.

Iraq will not resume pumping crude through a Kurdish pipeline to Turkey unless it reaches a financial agreement with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), the Iraqi oil minister said on March 22.

Masoud Barzani, the head of Iraq's Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), seems ever more determined to hold a referendum on independence. 

Ankara would never take any step that would damage Iraq's sovereignty and territorial integrity, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davuto?lu has said in a letter to his Iraqi counterpart, Haider al-Abadi, noting that Turkey would not deploy troops in the area until Baghdad's concerns are assuaged.