MESOPOTAMIA NEWS  – PKK is sending European citizens to ‘destabilize’ Iraqi Kurdistan, Barzani’s KRG says

Posted on June 11, 2021 MESOP NEWS 

HEWLÊR-Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan region,— The Barzani-dominated Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) ministry of interior made a bombshell accusation late on Thursday, claiming that the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) had sent citizens of European countries to Erbil in an attempt to disrupt the stability of the Kurdistan Region, but did not provide details to back up its allegation.

In an official statement likely to increase already significant intra-Kurdish tensions, the ministry said that hundreds of villages in the parts of Iraqi Kurdistan that border Turkey and Iran have been evacuated in recent years because of the presence of PKK fighters there with great material damage done to resident’s homes and farms.

The ministry’s statement departed from the typical KRG line, which usually blames fighting between Turkey and the PKK for the situation and calls on the PKK to take its fight with Ankara elsewhere.

On Thursday, the KRG focused exclusively on the presence of PKK fighters as the crux of the problem and did not mention Turkey.

Over the past week, the KRG and the Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) have escalated their rhetoric about the group following two separate incidents where a total of six Peshmerga died, accusing the PKK of responsibility, which the group denies.

Both have close economic, political, and security ties with Turkey.

Also new was the allegation that the PKK was attempting to use the Kurdish diaspora to disrupt the security of Iraqi Kurdistan, the alleged details of which it did not lay out directly.

KRG Prime Minister Masrour Barzani is currently on a European tour, which started on Wednesday in Belgium.

In its statement, the ministry claimed that the PKK was attempting to interfere in the internal affairs of Iraqi Kurdistan and create chaos and instability.

It warned that the security and stability of the Kurdish region in general, and Erbil in particular, represented a “red line,” adding that “we will not allow any group under any excuse and name to disrupt this stability.”

The KDP controls Erbil governorate. Barzani is a senior party member.

Iraqi Kurdistan is not a unified region, it is divided politically and geographically between the KDP led by Massoud Barzani and PUK led by the Talabani’s family. Erbil and Duhok governorates are controlled by the Barzanis and Sulaimani by PUK.

The interior ministry said that a group of European citizens had attempted to fly into Erbil under the name of freedom and peace groups with the help of a “local hand,” referring to the PKK.

It called on groups refrain from making themselves tools to destabilize Iraqi Kurdistan and argued that if their aims are truly peace and security that they should direct their words to the PKK’s headquarters in Qandil because insecurity and violence originate there.

In the past, the KRG and the KDP have alleged without proof that their critics are working on behalf of the PKK.

This past February, a court in Erbil sentenced five journalists and activists to six years in prison in a widely criticized trial, accusing them in part of working on behalf of a range of disparate actors including the PKK, the US and German consulates, and Iran. Human rights groups said that the evidence to that effect was “flimsy and circumstantial.”

Days before the trial, Prime Minister Barzani intervened publicly at a press conference and prejudiced the outcome by accusing the defendants of being “spies” working to destabilize Iraqi Kurdistan.

In his comments then, he used remarkably similar language to the ministry’s statement on Thursday.

Without providing evidence, Barzani claimed that the defendants’ work as journalists and activists was just a cover, while “behind the curtains they did other things.”

On June 10, a delegation from Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava), North-East Syria, was detained by KDP forces on their way to capital Erbil.

The delegation was made up of PYD Erbil Representative Mistefa Osman Xelîl, Autonomous Administration representative Cîhad Hesen and PYD member Ezîz Mistê. Officials from North-East Syria were on their way to Erbil Airport to welcome guests at 3 am Thursday night.

PYD co-Chairwoman Eyşe Hiso called on the government of South Kurdistan to immediately release those detained. The PYD is officially active in the autonomous region of South Kurdistan, and there is a permanent representation in Sulaymaniyah, she explained.

The KDP supports the Turkish state and the arrests are an indication that the crisis in Iraqi Kurdistan is worsening, she said and condemned the attitude of the KDP, recalling the previous issues they experienced at the Semelka border crossing before.

The Barzani’s KDP never recognized the Kurdish autonomous administration in Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava). Instead they created a pro-Turkey-Barzani Syrian political party, the Kurdish National Council Syria’s (KNC-ENKS), that opposed the self-administration in Syrian Kurdistan which was created by Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party PYD, Arabs, Christians and other minorities.

Current Iraqi Kurdistan president Nechirvan Barzani said in 2020 that Syrian Kurds must cut ties with PKK and strike deal with Assad. Nechirvan’s uncle, the KDP party head Massoud Barzani said in March 2016 any support to the Syrian Kurdish PYD party means support for the PKK. “They are exactly one and the same thing,”

The Kurdistan Region Government is completely turning a blind eye to the Turkish operations and the silence is evidence of their support to the Turkish attacks, according to experts.

Iraqi Kurdistan-ruling Barzani clan have close ties with the Turkish government, which is an important oil, economic and political partner of KDP, and opposes PKK.

The PKK took up arms in 1984 against the Turkish state, which still denies the constitutional existence of Kurds, to push for greater autonomy in Turkish Kurdistan for the Kurdish minority who make over 22.5 million of the country’s 82-million population. More than 40,000 Turkish soldiers and Kurdish rebels, have been killed in the conflict.

A large Kurdish community in Turkey Kurdistan, Iraqi Kurdistan, and worldwide openly sympathise with PKK rebels and Abdullah Ocalan, who founded the PKK group in 1974 and currently serving a life sentence in Turkey.