Tag: Kurdistan

Making Turkey work with the Kurds: the Canadian example

by Mohammad Shirdel

The government of Turkey has recently engaged in new rounds of dialogue and negotiation with their Kurdish population. However, in order for these talks to result in some sort of tangible gains for their systemically marginalized and suppressed Kurdish population, Turkey needs to make some concrete promises.

Because Turkey stood to lose a significant amount of land if Kurds were given their own state, they made it very clear shortly after the conclusion of WWI that they would not support any such agreement. One of the main problems for Turkey was that the Kurds had their own distinct culture and language, which they wanted to preserve. Overall, the current situation in Turkey in regards to their Kurdish population is essentially the same, in that they have more or less the same level of cultural protection and autonomy as they did close to 100 years ago.

One of the biggest obstacles to a positive relationship between the two sides is that of the Kurdish language, which was essentially outlawed in Turkey up until two decades ago. Therefore, one of the first steps in guaranteeing a viable resolution needs to be to provide the Kurds with state recognized schools intended to formalize Kurdish. This is because the recognition and institutionalization of Kurdish will give the language a solid foundation from which to build on in terms of how to properly write as well as speak. The current system of giving students a choice of taking Kurdish as an elective (as Prime Minister Erdogan recently suggested) is simply not enough to ensure the longevity or even existence of a language that has variations just in Turkey, never mind Iraq, Iran and Syria who also have their own versions. The problem with not having a formal language is that it severely hampers inter-Kurdish communication as well as rendering Kurdish useless as a symbol of helping Kurds identify with their own ethnicity outside of their local community.

A secondary reason for the institutionalization of Kurdish is the positive advantages for both the Kurds as well as the Turks. For example in Canada where the concept of having two native tongues (French and English) was originally thought of as detrimental to the overall cohesion of society, it is now lauded as one of its major accomplishments. And, while there are significant aspects such as the economic advantages of being able to have more trade through cross-cultural dialogue, the more important issue is that in Canada “what it guarantees is that no matter which language you speak – English or French – you can get the same level of service.” Therefore, by having the ability to have their language recognized, Kurds will be able to feel more included in Turkey, which in turn will help in stabilizing the relations between the two sides.

Another major hurdle for a viable resolution to the longstanding conflict in Turkey is the lack of representation that Kurds have in the legislative branch of government. Therefore, an armed struggle by the PKK is still viewed with a certain sense of legitimacy because of the outlet it provides for Kurds who feel as though their needs are constantly marginalized. In order to help reduce the attractiveness of bearing arms and combatting the Turkish government militarily, the central government needs to give assurances to the Kurdish community that they will have a permanent and guaranteed voice in parliament. By doing so, it would to remove some of the legitimacy as well as power of the military wing of the PKK, and move it over to their political branch known as the Peace and Democratic Party (BDP). This will help to both reduce the amount of violence in the region, and arguably more importantly it will help to address the most pressing grievances that Kurds have, by giving them legitimate political representation. Granted the BDP currently holds 34 seats of the 550 that were up for grab in the elections. Clearly having a voice in government is a step in the right direction. However, there are no guarantees in place to ensure that the Turkish government wont just ignore those voices as well. Therefore, Turkey needs to implement changes to their parliament, somewhat akin to what Canada has done.

For example, the Canadian government currently designates 75 out of its 308-seated parliament to the province of Quebec. It is important to note the symbolic as well as the functional benefits of this aspect of the Canadian parliament. Firstly, this measure ensures Quebec has a powerful voice in the legislative process of their country. Second, it proves to the people of Quebec that their voice will always be heard in government. Therefore, regardless of what parties are representing them, Quebecers will never be left out of the national conversation.

And while Canada has a horrible track record of the way they have treated their indigenous population as well as the current conditions of some native Canadian reserves being clearly indefensible, the way that Quebec has been protected through and by the legislative process, is something that Turkey can learn from when thinking of their Kurdish population.

via Making Turkey work with the Kurds: the Canadian example | Alliance for Kurdish Rights.

February 16, 2013
Turkey: A midwife for a Kurdish state?

Ankara has willy-nilly helped the Kurdish genie escape from the bottle and it will be very difficult for Turkey to push it back inside.

Photo: REUTERS

If there is one country that has helped build a Kurdish entity in Iraqi Kurdistan it is Turkey. This assertion seems paradoxical in view of Ankara’s traditional opposition to such an eventuality in Iraq and the well known pressures it applied on its allies, especially the United States, not to lend any support to the Kurds of Iraq because of the possible spillover effects on its own restive Kurds. Turkey’s new stance appears even more paradoxical against the backdrop of the latest upheavals in the region and their contagious effects both on its own Kurds and those of Syria.

How is one to explain these paradoxes? First let us have a quick look at the facts on the ground. Since the 1991 Gulf War and much more so after the 2003 Gulf War Turkey has turned itself, slowly but surely, and against its better judgment, into the lifeline for Iraqi Kurdistan, which is led by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), the euphemism for a Kurdish state in the making.

The slow change in Ankara’s policy towards the KRG was not due to any altruistic considerations but for very pragmatic, down to earth ones. Immediately after the 1991 Gulf War and the crushing of the Kurdish uprising which ensued, Turkey was confronted with the problem of a million Kurdish refugees on its border. Unwilling to burden itself with another million Kurds, Turkey devised with the Allies the “Provide Comfort” project for the fleeing Kurds to enable them to go back to their homes.

This plan, together with “the no-fly zone” where the Iraqi army could not act against the Kurds, as well as the ruptured relations between Ankara and Baghdad due to the war, set in motion the schizophrenic relations that would develop between Turkey and the KRG.

On the one hand Turkey was extremely apprehensive of the possible contagious effects of the KRG on its own Kurds, hence Ankara’s attempts to thwart any political and diplomatic gains by the KRG. On the other hand Ankara did its best to reap the fruits of its relations with the emerging entity, one of the most important of which were economic gains. This approach turned the Kurdistan Region into a huge investment area for Turkish companies whose number reached around 900 by 2012 and amounted to half of the companies acting in the KRG.

To this list one should add other large business, cultural and social ventures which turned the KRG into an undeclared Turkish sphere of influence. The net result was that no less than seven percent of Turkish exports went to the KRG.

Ankara’s thirst for oil and gas and the pressure brought to bear on it to stop importing from Iran go a long way to explain the surprising pipeline deal it cut with the KRG on May 20, 2012, without the approval of the central government in Baghdad. If it materializes, the deal, which envisaged the building of two oil pipelines and one gas pipeline from the Kurdistan Region to Turkey, might give further boost to Kurdish aspirations for independence.

Interestingly, the Turkish Minister of Energy and Natural Resources, Taner Yildiz, declared on that occasion that “Turkey should also be considered as the Regional Kurdish Government’s gateway to the West.”

A second important aim for developing these relations was the hope that the KRG would help in solving Turkey’s own acute Kurdish domestic problem, namely the ongoing attacks which the armed Turkish Kurdish PKK continued to launch against Turkish state targets.

However, Ankara’s hope that the KRG would fight against, or at least contain the PKK, whose bases are found in Iraqi Kurdistan, was not fulfilled. The third and perhaps most important consideration was Ankara’s need to attune itself to the region’s changing geostrategic map, which pushed it to act according to the dictum “my enemy’s enemy is my friend.”

The geostrategic considerations gathered momentum in the past two years due to several developments, all of which impacted negatively on Turkey’s environment and its foreign policy configurations.

Before analyzing these changes it must be stressed that the stance of the AKP government toward the Kurdish domestic issue as well as towards the KRG underwent slow transformation, which distinguished the AKP from earlier Kemalist governments.

The geostrategic changes were quite drastic, including the “Arab Spring,” which accelerated the collapse of the Turkish-Iranian-Syrian axis. Furthermore, the revolution in Syria not only turned Ankara and Damascus into sworn enemies once again but also raised the specter of the influx of Syrian refugees. Worse still, it opened the Pandora’s box of Syrian Kurds and their possible collaboration with their brethren in Turkey, not to speak of the PKK card which Damascus started to employ once again against Ankara.

The withdrawal of the American forces from Iraq in November 2011 and the vacuum left thereby was another very worrying development for Turkey, as it enhanced its competition with Iran for filling this vacuum.

Lastly, one should note the deteriorating relations between Ankara and Baghdad against the background of the Sunni-Shi’ite rivalry in the region, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s growing tilt toward Iran and his support for Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, as well as the growing personal antipathy between Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and Maliki.

All this weakened Ankara’s “commitment” to the almost sacred notion of Iraqi unity and emboldened it in its bilateral ties with the KRG, the most challenging of which for Baghdad was the oil pipeline deal mentioned above.

Turkey’s changing policy towards the KRG and its president Masu’d Barzani found its expression on the symbolic level as well.

Barzani’s April visit to Turkey was a case in point. While in the past Ankara treated Barzani as a mere “head of tribe,” in this most recent visit it accorded him a welcome befitting a head of state, thus turning him into one of its important allies in the region. Moreover, in this visit Barzani reiterated publicly the Kurds’ right to self-determination but, interestingly enough, Turkish officials and the media chose to turn “a deaf ear” to this declaration.

Turkey is facing now a Kurdish problem on all three fronts, which has multiplied its dilemmas but which has moved it, so it seems, to adopt a flexible and non-conventional policy: Embracing the KRG so as to contain its own Kurds and Syria’s as well. Should Turkey decide to give Barzani the green light, he would not hesitate to go the extra mile and declare independence. One thing is certain: Turkey has willy-nilly helped the Kurdish genie escape from the bottle and it will be very difficult for Ankara to push it back inside.

Prof. Ofra Bengio is head of the Kurdish Studies Program at the Moshe Dayan Center, Tel Aviv University and author of The Kurds of Iraq: Building a State within a State.

June 13, 2012
Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan look past hostilities to cooperate

April Yee

Nov 15, 2011

ERBIL, Iraq // Before Iraqi Kurdistan built its new airport, visitors often had to travel circuitous routes to get to the northern region, usually by way of Turkey.

Turkey has taken advantage of its proximity to build close business ties with this semi-autonomous region of Iraq, in spite of a tumultuous history that continues to pit Kurdish rebel fighters against the Turkish military.

“We are neighbours by blood,” said Mehmet Sepil, the chief executive of Genel Enerji, a Turkish company that drills in Kurdistan. “I’m sure in the future and in the very soon future there will be very good coordination between the Kurds [and the] Turkish government.”

Kurds, who are the majority in Kurdistan, are an ethnic minority in Turkey. Enmity between some Kurds and Turkish authorities dates as far back as Turkey’s efforts to “Turkify” Kurds in the 1930s, and for the past quarter of a century Kurdish rebels in Turkey have pushed for more political and civil rights, at times violently.

In the latest outbreak of violence, Turkey carried out an airstrike on Sunday in the Qandil Mountains near the border between Turkey and Iraq.

The attack targeted Kurdish rebels of the PKK – the Kurdistan Workers’ Party – an organisation that is based in Kurdistan and positions itself as a foe of the Turkish government.

But when it comes to business, Iraqi Kurdistan has turned a blind eye to Turkey’s military incursions, and Turkey to the rebels based in Kurdistan. The working relationship is about one thing, energy.

“Turkey has a big need for energy,” Mr Sepil said.

“Today, Turkey produces only about 8 to 10 per cent of the crude it needs and only 1 or 2 per cent of the gas. Every year power demand grows by 2,500 megawatts … We are paying a huge bill to Russia, Azerbaijan, Iran to cover these costs.”

Turkey hopes to ship Kurdish gas through the planned Nabucco pipeline to Europe, and Kurdistan has talked of an alternative plan to send the gas to a plant at the Turkish port of Ceyhan, where it would be liquefied for export by sea to international markets.

Genel Enerji brought US$2.1 billion (Dh7.71bn) of investment to Kurdistan in September when it struck a deal to merge with Vallares, the investment company headed by Tony Hayward, who stepped down as chief executive of BP last year.

Despite the recent airstrikes, Ashti Hawrami, the oil minister of Kurdistan, characterised the state of play with Turkey as “a good relationship”.

ayee@thenational.ae

via Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan look past hostilities to cooperate – The National.

November 15, 2011
Turkey’s Demands and Kurdistan’s Answers

By REBWAR KARIM WALI

The wave of arrests of Kurds in Turkey as well as violence between the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Turkish security forces that began again in July show no signs of abating.

The latest episode was the October 19 attack by PKK fighters on Turkish military bases in Hakkari province that led to the highest number of Turkish casualties since 1993.

In response, the police have joined the military’s new operations against the PKK. The police have also detained and imprisoned hundreds of Kurdish political activists as part of what is known as “KCK dossier.”

The KCK stands for the Union of Communities in Kurdistan, which was founded by the PKK’s jailed leader, Abdullah Ocalan. A PKK leader recently told me that the number of arrests have not been this high since the 1980 military coup.

The most recent PKK attack shocked Turkey and drew a strong reaction from the Kurdistan Region of Iraq as well. In a message of condemnation, Kurdistan Region’s President Massoud Barzani described the attack as a “crime” and noted that it came as there were ongoing efforts to find a political solution to Turkey’s Kurdish issue.

The office of Kurdistan Prime Minister Barham Salih also denounced the attack. Shortly afterward, based on a request from Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, former Kurdistan Region Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani met with the Turkish prime minister and foreign minister in Ankara on a trip representing the region’s president. It was announced that the Kurdistan Region president would soon visit Ankara as well.

Turkey demands the Kurdistan region provide military assistance in its fight against the PKK. But to what extent is that possible?

“The Turkish army doesn’t have the same zeal and energy as it once did, and the PKK is no longer afraid of it”

According to informed Turkish sources, the Turkish plan appears as follows: A) Turkey can militarily occupy all areas in the Kurdistan Region that the Kurdish Peshmarga and security forces cannot control; B) The Kurdistan Region should promise that its Peshmarga forces will not attack Turkey, aid the PKK or allow its fighters to attack Turkish soldiers.

Turkey, in return, has promised to return control of all areas to the Kurdistan Regional Government’s Peshmarga forces when the forces are able to secure the areas.

According to the Turkish sources, the response of the Kurdish delegation to this proposal has been the following: A) The Kurdistan Region understands its responsibility to not allow its soil to be used for attacks against its neighbors; B) The Peshmarga forces will not take part in any fighting in support of any side; C) There is only one solution to this problem and that is a peaceful and political one. D) Ocalan’s conditions need to be improved and the government should talk to him.

Turkey is hoping to achieve two major goals in relation to the PKK.

First, to lower the bar of Kurdish demands before the process begins to amend the constitution. This can be done by delivering a blow to the PKK.

Second, the PKK has become a problem for Turkey’s ambitious foreign policy. The clashes between the PKK and the army undermine Turkey’s focus on its foreign and regional policy, so Turkey wants to rid itself of that problem.

If these are the main Turkish goals in battling the PKK, the Kurdish group also wants to increase pressure on the PKK as much as possible.

Even if Ocalan was not freed, he would be placed under house arrest. The PKK and Ocalan need be accepted as the only partners in resolving the Kurdish issue and need to engage in open negotiations.

The Kurdistan Region cannot engage in any military cooperation with Turkey because the Kurdish political leadership believes this problem can’t be solved through war. The Kurdish public would never allow this to happen.

Therefore, Barzani’s trip to Ankara can be only useful in terms of advancing a political solution. The direction Turkey has taken will lead to nowhere. The role that the Kurdistan Region has played in the past in convincing the PKK to announce a ceasefire needs to continue because that role is important for the PKK, Turkey and the Kurdistan Region.

That role ending would especially harm the PKK. The current complications in Turkey’s Kurdish areas and the end of large-scale civilian activities are a testament to that claim.

But it seems the PKK is no longer ready to accept a ceasefire because it sees the current circumstances as in its interest. Besides, the Turkish army doesn’t have the same zeal and energy as it once did, and the PKK is no longer afraid of it.

The PKK has become a mobile state and has shown that neither the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) or any Kurdish political figure has the capital and initiative to make decisions in the name of Kurds. So, in the end, Turkey should decide that all roads lead to Ocalan and his conditions.

If Ocalan is taken out of Imrali prison and is allowed movement, he will pour some water on the fire that has currently engulfed Turkey. The PKK will lay down arms and Turkey will rid itself of this conflict. The Kurdistan Region can play a crucial role in this regard.

via Rudaw in English….The Happening: Latest News and Multimedia about Kurdistan, Iraq and the World – Turkey’s Demands and Kurdistan’s Answers.

October 29, 2011
Turkey and Iran in their ‘final showdown’ with PKK

By Salah Bayaziddi

During the past few years, both Turkish and Iranian military have appeared as an aggressor who can easily cross the border of Kurdistan Region, intentionally engage in shelling and bombardment of civilians and openly show their disrespect for the international laws of the sovereign states.

PKK fighters stand near the Qandil mountains near the Iraq-Turkish border in Sulaimaniya, 330 km (205 miles) northeast of Baghdad, September 30, 2010.

During the past few years, both Turkish and Iranian military have appeared as an aggressor who can easily cross the border of Kurdistan Region, intentionally engage in shelling and bombardment of civilians and openly show their disrespect for the international laws of the sovereign states.
However, the recent military actions of Turkey and Iran seem to be a joined and pre-planned operation and they have pretext of the removal of Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) forces from the Qandil Mountains and border regions once and for all. In their “final showdown” with PKK, both Turkey and Iran seem to have turned to Sri Lanka for lessons in beating down an insurgency while they could look for peaceful solutions to ethnic problems in countries such as Spain (Basques) and Great Britain (Irish Republican Army).
Both countries clearly were jubilant and excited having witnessed the Sri Lankan government finally declare victory over the armed insurgent group Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2009, it was an end to the island’s 26 years of civil war and uncompromising brutal ethnic conflict. More than a year ago, I wrote about the possibility of such a plan, and now it seems to achieve a military victory, Turkish and Iranian policymakers aim to take all measures and are reviewing different scenarios to repeat the Sri Lankan experiment.
No doubt the Sri Lankan experiment seems to have brought to a close the Tigers’ fight for a separate state, and it enforces the domination of the exclusionist political system of the Sinhalese majority over the Tamil minority in an ethnic conflict that witnessed the deaths of more than 100,000 people. Far from Sri Lanka, the Kurdish national movement in both Turkey and Iran, a chronic case of ethnic conflict in the Middle East, has remained defiant to the assimilation and pan-Turkism policies of Turkey and denial of national rights of Kurds in Iran since the rise of the modern Republic of Turkey in 1923. As with the Tamil conflict, an ethnic armed organization, PKK, has been fighting against the exclusionist state of the Turkish majority since 1984 and its close associate, Free Life Party of Kurdistan (PJAK) in Iran since 2005. To counter PKK and PJAK activities in the Kurdish-dominated regions of the southeast and eastern Kurdistan provinces, it seems both Turkish and Iranian policymakers are closely reviewing the Tigers’ experiment in Sri Lanka, and they plan to repeat the same type of victory in their final showdown with PKK and PJAK.
Since the end of World War II and the recognition of the boundaries of the nation-state, the international system has not favored dramatic changes; stateless nationalism had no choice but to engage in war of secession, which in turn develops into major regional conflicts. Unlike the Kurdish conflict in Turkey, resentment of the Tamils’ privileged status under British colonial rulers surfaced when the Sinhalese majority took power after independence in 1948. With Sinhalese nationalism on the rise, the Tamil minority was pushed aside and had no choice but to take up arms and a full-scale war erupted years later. In the middle of this period, the Tamil Tigers formed in 1983 to wage a war of secession on the exclusionist government of the Sinhalese majority on behalf of the Tamil minority. The Tamil Tigers opted for extremism and wanted a separate Tamil homeland. To combat this plan, the Sri Lankan government took all counter measures to defeat them, resulting in 26 years of brutal civil war on this island. Along the bloody line of this ethnic conflict, sometimes “the national struggle” came to justify methods that could badly damage the popular support of the movement. The Tigers’ use of suicide bombers and government accusations of Tamil’s recruiting children as young as 13 to fight and using human shields seemed to have weakened LTTE’s position in its fight against the Sri Lankan government.
In the same way, the old structure of the Cold War era couldn’t protect the boundaries of the Turkish and Persian majority role from the growth of the Kurdish nationalism, and no more the structure of nation-state could be seen as a legitimate political system in multi-ethnic societies. It was in this political hothouse atmosphere that the Kurdish nationalist movement in 1980s and the 1990s, led by the PKK, started to challenge the structure of the state and its legitimate Kemalist ideology of one state and one nation. In Iran, since the fall of the shah in 1979, the Kurdish national movement seems to be the major ethnic group to challenge anti-minority policies and denial of national rights. It was some measures of the growing support for the widespread Kurdish radicalization that prompted the military to claim it was acting to foil a Kurdish uprising. There are other tactical and logistical measures that helped intensify PKK and PJAK’s armed uprising against the Turkish and Iranian states. In this respect, we can talk about the use of classic guerrilla warfare. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, PKK had acquired the characteristic of a mass uprising and received some degree of sanctuary and training facilities from neighboring countries while the Kurdish insurgency was losing the momentum in Iran.
Unlike PKK and PJAK, the Tamil Tigers had no luxury of such geographical favors as high mountains or mobile personnel for waging a classic guerrilla war. They were completely surrounded inside relatively small coastal areas in the northeast on a border with an enemy who was fully armed in the south. They had limited room to maneuver on the ground. However, at the peak of their strength, the Tamil Tigers had close to 15,000 fighters, controlled nearly a third of the island, and were operating an effectively autonomous Tamil state. By spring 2009, the Sri Lankan government was reviewing a plan to finish the Tamil Tigers’ insurgency once and for all, and it was clear that in the Sinhalese’s majority political system, there was no room for a Tamil enclave state to exist.
When the president of Sri Lanka declared the Tamil Tigers defeated, it was an end to several decades of bitter ethnic bloodshed. The Sri Lankan military had captured the last strip of beach held by the Tamil Tigers, leaving them completely surrounded and eventually denying them a chance of escaping by boat. During these military operations, the Sri Lankan government also barred diplomats, independent journalists and most aid workers from the conflict area where an independent probe into possible war crimes in Sri Lanka was vital. When Sri Lankan troops killed the Tamil Tigers’ leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, it was a major blow to the Tigers’ fight for a separate state.
It seems there’s no doubt that to achieve such a military victory, both Turkish and Iranian policymakers aim to take all drastic measures and are reviewing different scenarios to repeat Sri Lanka’s experiment during the current intensifying airstrikes and bombardment of Kurdistan borders. Yet today, following the major pro-democracy movements in northern Africa and the Middle East, we are witnessing a different world, and at almost every turn, violent ethnic confrontations have yielded negotiated peace accords, such as the case with the Kosovo Liberation Army or the Irish Republican Army. Neither Turkey nor Iran should look for a military solution to the Kurdish question, and Turkish and Iranian policymakers should learn their lessons from the past and finally come to the conclusion there are no similarities between the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka and the Kurdish national movements in Turkey and Iran. The Kurdish question in Turkey and Iran is not just about the presence of a few thousand armed PKK and PJAK fighters in the border regions. There is a widespread historical grievance and dissatisfaction among Kurdish people in every corner of both these countries, and the Turkish and Iranian governments should finally come to their senses and look for a long-standing peaceful solution to the Kurdish conflict.

September 14, 2011
Iran and Turkey major exporters to Kurdistan

The Globe

The Haji Omaran border crossing where goods come into Kurdistan Region from Iran.

The Kurdistan Region depends on neighboring countries Iran and Turkey for many of its goods. According to experts, the Kurdistan Regional Government cannot end these trade relationships to pressure either country to end the bombardment of the Region.

The Kurdistan Region depends on neighboring countries Iran and Turkey for many of its goods. According to experts, the Kurdistan Regional Government cannot end these trade relationships to pressure either country to end the bombardment of the Region.

Iran and Turkey are the Region’s main suppliers of goods and trade is around $10 billion dollars a year, and rising. Around 80 percent of goods in Kurdistan Region come from either Turkey or Iran.

Kurdistan Region has around 1,200 foreign companies investing in the Region, and more than half of these are Turkish. The Region also has dozens of Iranian companies.

Economic expert and Deputy Head of the Kurdistan Region Economy Relationships, Faisal Ali, says if the Region broke off trade relations with these two countries, there would be dire consequences because “The only entry point for the Region to import materials would be the central and southern parts of Iraq whose goods are mostly Turkish and Iranian!”

Other than clothes and consumer items, Iranian and Turkish companies build apartments and roads. After 20 years of KRG, the Region still relies almost exclusively on imported goods and raw materials, making it a net importer.

Economic expert Dr. Dler Shawes believes the economy and businesses should be organized under specific theories and principles.

“The absence of such theories and principles means the Region has a weak policy regarding its economy and business. This has also made the Kurdistan Region a net consumer, which depends mainly on Turkey, Iran, Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia,” said Shawes.

Most goods come over the border crossings with Iran and Turkey, but some goods come through Erbil and Suleimaniya airports.

“Any consumer country cannot have a strong economic infrastructure. This economic situation caused KRG to have a weak political stance towards neighboring countries as well,” said Ali.

Ali also said it is impossible to close the border crossings, as it would cause hardship on the people of Kurdistan Region. “Prices would go up and people would face huge problems.”

While the Kurdistan Region practices these policies in its economy and and there is negligible local investment, the Region is rich in terms of oil and other natural resources, such as fertile land.

Many of the villages were abandoned when the government started employing many in the public sector. According to Shawes, KRG should implement policies to encourage investment in rural areas and have people move back to the villages.

“If the government had cared about the agricultural and industrial sectors in recent years, the Kurdistan Region would now be able to stop trade relations with one of these two countries and use it as political pressure to stop bombardments,” said Ali.

Some experts believe Iran and Turkey would be hard pressed to find other countries to export their goods to, as Kurdistan provides an excellent and convenient market.

Shawes thinks differently and points out Turkey has also a strong economic relationship with Europe, some eastern countries and Gulf countries. “Although Kurdistan Region is a location for those two countries in terms of business, economy, culture, politics and other aspects, Iran also has strong business ties with Russia, Azerbaijan and some other countries.”

via KurdishGlobe- Iran and Turkey major exporters to Kurdistan.

September 14, 2011