Recep Tayyip Erdogan
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened an oil embargo and starvation of the Iraqi Kurdistan in response to the referendum on independence held on 25 September. About it reports Reuters.
“They will be in trouble as soon as we begin to apply sanctions. The end will come when we turn off the oil valve. All income will stop and they will have nothing to eat as soon as our trucks will no longer travel to Northern Iraq,” he said.
Erdogan added that if the neighboring States will organize an economic blockade of Iraqi Kurdistan, Israel, who supported the plebiscite will not be able to help the Kurds.
The Turkish leader added that support for tel Aviv is unlikely to help the Kurds “to their country”. As an example, Erdogan said that Kosovo did not become a state, although “it and recognized dozens of countries.”
25 September in Iraqi Kurdistan held a referendum on independence. Against the holding of a plebiscite categorically Baghdad, Ankara and Tehran. Western countries have 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. Included in this region’s province of Dahuk, Sulaymaniyah and Erbil are traditionally the place of residence of Kurds. The authorities in the region is the Kurdistan Democratic party led by Massoud Barzani.