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2020 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

8. Iraq and the Kurds: What Threats to European Stability?

Author : Samuel Doveri Vesterbye

Published in: Managing Security Threats along the EU’s Eastern Flanks

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

The chapter examines European conceptions of threat emanating from Iraq, with a particular focus on the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG). It looks at Turkey’s recent role in Northern Iraq from the mid-2000s onwards and up until the 2017 referendum, while also examining regional cooperation from the perspectives of the US, the European Union (EU) and Russia. It looks at the EU’s new development role and economic support inside of Iraq and the KRG, including the importance of migration, de-radicalisation, energy projects and local alliances. The research is supported by secondary legal literature on trade agreements and interviews with EU and Turkish policymakers, including Kurdish political representatives from Iraq and Syria.

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previous chapter Security Challenges in Ukraine After Euromaidan

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See Chap. 1 in this volume. The ENP was outlined in the Joint Communication on 25 May 2011 and provides foreign policy guidance and financial support under the technical assistance of the European Neighbourhood Instrument (ENI). It helps develop regional affairs and, more specifically, deals with the EU’s 16 bordering and partner countries across the EU’s southern and eastern neighbourhoods, ranging from Morocco and Syria to Israel, Ukraine and Belarus.

It is estimated that approximately 13.4% of Turkey is ethnically and/or linguistically Kurdish. Demographically, the Kurdish population, in what the Turkish General Directorate of Civil Registration and Nationality refers to as Southeast Anatolia (TRC Güneydoğu Anadolu), continued to grow at high rates of 3.37 in 2016.

‘Iraq’s Constitution of 2005’, Constitute, Special, Comparative Constitutions Project (2005), p. 42. Online: https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/Iraq_2005.pdf?lang=en.

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‘Iran and Iraq. The Shia Connection, Soft Power, and the Nuclear Factor’, United States Institute of Peace, Special Report 156 (November 2005), p. 2.

Aram Nerguizian, ‘Turkish-Arab Economic and Military Cooperation: How Far Will It Go?’, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (December 2010). Online: http://carnegieendowment.org/sada/?fa=42145.

The KDP was founded by Mustafa Barzani in 1946 and continues to be the KRG’s largest Kurdish political party. Traditionally, it holds moderate-conservative views, while engaging with the private sector and international companies, including ones from Turkey.

The Ergenekon trials were a series of Turkish court indictments that are believed to have curbed back the powers of the Turkish Armed Forces during 2008–2009. At the height of the trials, maxi courtrooms reportedly trialled hundreds of military personnel, journalists and opposition members for allegedly participating in ‘secular clandestine networks’ aimed at overthrowing the Turkish government.

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Turkey’s electoral system disfavours small parties, as the electoral law requires for political seats won in a general election by a given political party to be reallocated to larger parties unless the given (smaller) party receives a minimum of 10% of the vote. The outcome of the November 2015 election came very close to barring parliamentary representation of the HDP in Turkey’s parliament, due to the aforementioned reason.

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Da’esh is more commonly known as Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) or simply Islamic State (IS).

The KRI is a federal region in Iraq, consisting of Dohuk, Erbil and Suleimaniyah governorates. To avoid confusion, the term ‘KRG’ is used throughout this chapter to refer to the constitutionally defined federal Iraqi region of Kurdistan region of Iraq.

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Eligible referendum voters on 23 September (electronic voting) and 25 September (physical ballot voting) 2017 included Iraqi citizens having registered with the Voters’ Registration Database (E-voting database) with documented proof of being a citizen of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq under the authority of the KRG, or Kurdistani territories, which remain controversially delineated and disputed areas by Iraq’s central government and the KRG. Electronic voting by the Kurdish diaspora followed the same criteria.

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Beck, John, ‘Iraqi soldiers fleeing ISIS claim they were “abandoned” by senior officials’, Vice News, 15 June 2014, available at: https://news.vice.com/article/iraqi-soldiers-fleeing-isis-claim-they-were-abandoned-by-senior-officers.

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EU-Iraq Partnership and Cooperation Agreement, Official Journal of the European Union, L204/20, 31 July 2012, available at: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2012:204:0020:0130:EN:PDF.

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Laotides, Costas, ‘How Foreign Is the Kurdish Issue in Iran’s Foreign Policy’, in Shahram Akbarzadeh and Dara Conduit (eds) Iran in the World (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), pp. 95–101.

Mawji, Omar, ‘Iraqi Kurdistan’s Oil Industry & Autonomy’, Palisade Research (2016), p. 3.

Milliyet, ‘HDP’ li Vekil Abdullah Zeydan: PKK sizi tükürüğüyle boğar’, 27 July 2015, available at: http://www.milliyet.com.tr/hdp-li-vekil-abdullah-zeydan-pkk/siyaset/detay/2093162/default.htm.

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Rudaw, ‘Referendum can be postponed only with guarantees on independence: Barzani’, 18 September 2017, available at: http://www.rudaw.net/english/kurdistan/1809201712.

Salih Waisy, Krawan, ‘The roots of the Iraqi Kurdish internal rivalries, conflicts and peace process 1964–2000’, American International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences 10:3 (2015), pp. 220–232, available at: http://iasir.net/AIJRHASSpapers/AIJRHASS15-372.pdf.

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Title: Iraq and the Kurds: What Threats to European Stability?
Author: Samuel Doveri Vesterbye
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Book: Managing Security Threats along the EU’s Eastern Flanks
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-26936-4

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-030-26937-1

Copyright Year: 2020
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26937-1_8