Turkey’s Parliament on Saturday, September 23, voted to extend by a year a mandate allowing the country’s Armed forces to conduct operations in Syria and Iraq. According to Reuters, the meeting was held before the planned for 25 September with the independence referendum in Iraqi Kurdistan.
The Agency notes that Turkey has previously said it is ready to take security measures and to make necessary political and economic steps in response to the plebiscite. The representative of the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s upcoming vote has been described as “a terrible mistake, which will lead to new crises in the region.”
TASS reported with reference to Anadolu Agency said that the mandate allows the Turkish army to carry out military operations abroad (Syria and Iraq), and also allows you to stay in Turkey contingents and military bases allies of Ankara.
Against the referendum on secession of Iraqi Kurdistan also stands and Baghdad. The authorities of the Autonomous region unilaterally announced the holding of a plebiscite, despite the official position of Iraq, who consider a popular vote on the issue illegal.
In addition, 16 Sep Western countries called on the authorities of the Iraqi Kurdistan region not to hold a plebiscite. In the United States stated that “the holding of a referendum in the disputed areas is a particularly provocative and destabilizing”.
Iraqi Kurdistan is the unofficial name of the Kurdish Autonomous region in the North and North-East of Iraq, which has the status of a wide autonomy within the country’s legally enshrined in the Constitution and de facto semi-independent. Included in this region’s province of Dahuk, Sulaymaniyah and Erbil are traditionally the region’s ethnic Kurdish. The authorities in the region is the Democratic party of Kurdistan led by President Massoud Barzani.