ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – The Peshmerga ministry has hit back after an Iranian military official warned the Kurdistan independence referendum may cause conflict in Iraq.
“Holding the referendum is a natural and just right of the people of Kurdistan and no one other than the people of Kurdistan has the right to talk about it,” declared a statement from the Peshmerga ministry on Friday.
Iran’s military chief of staff General Mohammad Hossein Bagheri made a rare visit to Ankara for three days this week where he met with his Turkish counterpart, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Turkey’s defence minister.
He told Iranian media Wednesday that they discussed the Kurdistan referendum.
The two sides “stressed that if the referendum is held, it will become the basis for a series of tensions and conflicts inside Iraq, which will have consequences on neighboring countries,” Bagheri told Iran’s IRNA.
He added that the two countries shared the view that the referendum “should not take place.”
It is the first such visit for Iran’s military chief to the Turkish capital since 1979.
The Peshmerga accused Iran of intervening in an internal matter.
“Hereby we announce to everyone that talking about the rights of the people of Kurdistan is not the duty of this person and this will be considered as a blatant intervention in the internal affairs of Kurdistan,” read the statement attributed to a spokesperson of the Peshmerga ministry.
Iran and Turkey, who each have significant Kurdish populations, have said separately that they oppose the Kurdistan Region’s plans to hold an independence referendum on September 25.
Iran’s ambassador in Baghdad held a meeting with a Kurdistan negotiation team visiting the Iraqi capital to discuss the referendum with both Iraqi and foreign officials.
Ambassador Iraj Masjedi told reporters on Tuesday that they support any “negotiated agreement” between Erbil and Baghdad, taking a softer line than Bagheri and that of Iran’s national security advisor who had said the Kurdistan Region should not expect “good things” from Tehran in response to the September vote.
Baghdad has called the referendum unconstitutional and unilateral, and said it will not recognize the result. The Kurdistan Region says Iraq pushed Erbil into calling the referendum by violating at least 50 articles of the Iraqi constitution, including Article 140 that concerns disputed areas claimed by both Erbil and Baghdad, and the budget-share that has been cut since early 2014.
