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Bakir: Kurdistan as a Model for Iraq

Council on Foreign Relations

Interviewee: Falah Mustafa Bakir, Director of the Foreign Relations Department, Kurdistan Regional Government, Iraq
Interviewer: Greg Bruno, Staff Writer

October 22, 2007

Falah Mustafa Bakir, director of the foreign relations department for the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq, says his government favors a political solution to cross-border tensions with Turkey, but so far, Ankara has “only considered a military operation to solve this problem.” He adds that while Kurds “would like to have an independent Kurdish state,” political realities in Iraq have prompted Kurdish officials to embrace a federal government strategy to solving Iraq’s sectarian problems.

Turkey’s parliament has voted on a military plan to allow Turkish soldiers to conduct cross-border raids against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq. How would the Kurdish government respond to such an act of aggression and, in your view, what’s behind the latest tough talk from Ankara?

We believe the best way to solve this problem is through political dialogue. We understand Turkey’s concerns and we are against the killing of civilians, but there is no military solution for this problem. It would be in the interests of both Turkey and the KRG [Kurdistan Regional Government] for this question to be addressed politically, and we believe there may now be an opportunity for a political approach.

So far the Turkish government has only considered a military operation to solve this problem. But history and experience have proven that you cannot solve such a problem only through military means. We believe there is a window of opportunity and the door is still open for an alternative to a military solution.

Read the rest of this article on the cfr.org website.

Copyright 2007 by the Council on Foreign Relations. This material is republished on GlobalSecurity.org with specific permission from the cfr.org. Reprint and republication queries for this article should be directed to cfr.org.