MESOP MIDEAST WATCH : Kurdistan’s Weekly Brief April 11, 2023
A weekly brief of events occurred in the Kurdistan regions of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey.
Iran
Unidentified perpetrators attacked 12 more girls’ schools across Iran with poison gas on Sunday, including schools in the Kurdish cities of Saqqez, Diwandarah, Urmia, Naqedeh, and Senna. The attacks sent over a hundred students to hospitals and sparked anti-regime protests in several Kurdish cities. In Saqqez, regime forces opened fire on demonstrators who were voicing disapproval of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and removing Iranian flags from schools. On Monday, several store owners in the city held a general strike to protest the ongoing attacks against Iranian schoolgirls. Protests also coincided with the death of a Kurdish teen who was poisoned several weeks ago during a gas attack in Kamyaran. Concurrently, the regime installed security cameras to identify Iranian women defying the country’s hijab law. Furthermore, the regime arrested a female teacher in Senna named Fariba Karimi, which raised the number of detained educators in 2023 to 16. Likewise, Iranian authorities arrested an activist named Sakina Parwana in Quchan and two Sufi Tariqa followers in Mehabad. Lastly, an Iranian court sentenced an imam in Senna to two years in prison for “misleading public opinion” after he supported anti-government protests.
Rudaw reported the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) al Hamza Base, Mohammad Taghi Osanloo, recommended the depopulation of 33 Kurdish villages. Al Hamza is one of the IRGC’s ten main bases and located in Iranian Kurdistan. A memorandum from Osanloo to the Ministry of Interior claimed Kurdish opposition parties in the area are smuggling weapons into Iran and organizing resistance activities.
Iraq
On April 7, a Turkish drone strike targeted Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) General Commander Mazloum Abdi at the Sulaymaniyah International Airport while he was leading a delegation from Syria to meet with U.S. officials. Three U.S. servicemembers were with Abdi’s delegation when the attack occurred, but no one was injured, and the U.S. said it is investigating the incident. The attack raised tensions between Iraq’s main Kurdish parties, but the Presidency of Kurdistan Region condemned it and called for the Kurdish parties to stop hurling accusations at each other and take steps to resolve their differences. On Monday, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu claimed the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) was operating in Sulaymaniyah. Turkey also closed its airspace to flights from Sulaymaniyah, including those of Turkish airlines, before Friday’s attack. After the attack, General Abdi said Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan “seeks to win the elections and creates a state of chaos to eliminate the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria so that he can open the door for a new invasion of the region.”
Oil exports from the Kurdistan Region remain paused despite a new Erbil-Baghdad agreement that entailed their resumption. The ongoing pause, which is officially due to “technical issues,” continues to cost the Iraqi government millions of dollars in revenue per day. With that said, Iraqi officials are discussing other routes for oil exports, including one through Syria and another through a proposed pipeline transiting Aqaba, Jordan, which Iraq’s Iranian-backed parties oppose. The US has endorsed the Baghdad-Erbil agreement and called it a “win for the entire country.”
Syria
On April 9, Turkey and its Syrian proxies bombarded territory controlled by the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) near Ain Issa. Turkish artillery targeted several grain silos in rural areas surrounding the city in an attempt to destroy the AANES’s food supplies. In the early hours of the same day, the SDF, backed by the U.S.-led Coalition, raided a house in Deir ez Zor and arrested a notorious ISIS (Da’esh) terrorist known as “Al-Fadgham.” On April 4, US Central Command (CENTCOM) announced a U.S. drone killed Khalid ‘Aydd Ahmad al-Jabouri, a Da’esh leader responsible for planning several attacks, in northwest Syria.
The Turkey-based Wafaa al-Mohsenin Charity finished building a new settlement in illegally-occupied Afrin on April 10. The settlement’s construction coincided with Turkish proxies’ ongoing theft of olives and lumber from the region. Nazmi Hazouri, the Consulate General of Palestine to Erbil, denied the veracity of reports claiming the Palestinian Authority was assisting settlement construction in Afrin. Concomitantly, on April 9, Turkish border guards attacked 15 Syrian citizens who were attempting to cross the Turkish border near Jindires.
Turkey
The pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) and its partners in the Green Left Party (YSP) opened election offices in Yuksekova, Malatya, Elazığ, Istanbul, Ankara, Konya, Siirt, Hakkari, and Esenyurt. Thousands attended the opening ceremony in Yüksekova, and HDP Co-Chair Pervin Buldan spoke in favor of women’s rights at the opening celebration in Esenyurt and repeated the protest slogan of the Amini protests in Iran, “Jin, Jiyan, Azadi,” as a call to arms for Kurdish supporters in Turkey. Separately, unidentified persons vandalized the Istanbul YSP office by drawing three crescents – a Turkish nationalist symbol – and writing anti-Kurdish slogans on its walls.
On April 6, the HDP announced it would not present an oral defense to the Constitutional Court of Turkey regarding the Turkish government’s efforts to close the party. The HDP also released a statement clarifying the decision that read, “Since the three petitions submitted to the Supreme Court by the client party, the dates of which are stated above, are explained in detail as to why the oral defense should be left until after the election, no further explanation will be made here.” Concurrently, the HDP raised concerns about allegations of solitary confinement practices targeting Kurdish prisoners after inmates were punished for writing in Kurdish.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu announced the foreign ministers of Turkey, Russia, Iran, and Syria might hold another round of Astana talks in early May to resolve differences between Turkey and the Assad regime and attempt to end the Syrian Civil War. The talks would take place in Moscow and strive to reach an understanding with current Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan before Turkey’s May 14 election, which could result in a new Turkish president and government less amenable to Moscow, Damascus, or Tehran’s interests. On April 5, Badran Chiya Kurd, co-chair of the AANES’s Foreign Relations Department, expressed skepticism that the talks would end the Syrian conflict or achieve meaningful progress.