At the same time, the Turkish government is pursuing a separate path of negotiations, through a rapprochement with another Kurdish authority the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq.

The issue is complicated further by Turkey s refusal to negotiate directly with the Kurdish Regional Government in northern Iraq.

At the same time, the Turkish government is pursuing a separate path of negotiations, through a rapprochement with another Kurdish authority the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq. The grand vision is to integrate Iraqi Kurdistan into the Turkish economy.

The deal between the Bush linked Hunt Oil Company and the Kurdish Regional Government has uncovered a major crisis between the Maliki Government and the US, according to well informed sources. ...

Iraq s Kurds may even be able to extend their influence into Kurdish populated northern Syria, thereby becoming a more influential regional player than the Iraqi government in Baghdad.

More broadly, the government regards the US as too complacent vis à vis Kurdish political developments and unmoved by Turkey's concerns about Kurdish independence.

Since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, the ITF has contested control of Kirkuk and other areas of northern Iraq (However inoficially controlled by Kurdish Regional Government since 2014.).

But now its concern is more closely tied to regional politics than to the Kurdish issue.

Regional and domestic developments could push the Kurdish authorities in Erbil, their capital, toward declaring formal independence.

Kurdish parties joined forces against the Iraqi government during the war in Spring 2003.

As a result, the Erdoğan government has decided on negotiations with Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed leader of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), the armed Kurdish resistance movement.

In the Kurdish region of northern Iraq, however, the situation is completely different in the last ten years, under the protection of the Allies' no fly zone, and even more so since the toppling of Saddam, the Kurdish regional government has been able to establish and sustain a relatively orderly administration.

On May 15, two small independent energy companies (Turkey s Genel Enerji and Canada s Addax Petroleum) became the latest foreign firms to begin drilling in Kurdish controlled territory under an agreement with the regional government.

A rapprochement with Israel and, more important, a lasting peace with its Kurdish population, would boost Turkey s regional influence.

Erdoğan s plan, however, depends on ending Turkey s 30 year conflict with its own Kurdish population. As a result, the Erdoğan government has decided on negotiations with Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed leader of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), the armed Kurdish resistance movement.

It justified Turkey s policy vis à vis the Kurdish Regional Government in Northern Iraq, its involvement in Bosnia and in Kosovo, its rapprochement with Syria, and also its attempt to mediate between Syria and Israel.

At the same time, the Kurdish leader Mustafa Barzani led a rebellion against the central government in Baghdad.

Syria s Kurdish Hope

Erdoğan s Kurdish Gambit

Threats to Iraq s oil infrastructure around the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk and other territory under the Kurdish Regional Government s control are minimal.

With all that in mind, this latest move by Turkey s parliament should be seen more as an ultimatum to Iraq s Kurdish Regional Government to expel the Turkish Kurds and an attempt to persuade the US to use its considerable influence there.

Erdogan s government seems to recognize this, and has recently shown an interest in initiating a dialogue with Iraqi Kurdish leaders.

On 27 November 2010, the Kurdish government officially admitted to violence against women in Kurdistan and began taking serious measures.

Indeed, the KRG government has long made clear that it respects Turkish sovereignty and will not interfere with relations between Turkey s government and its own Kurdish population.

Does he speak Kurdish?

The same year, Mustafa Barzani, who had been invited to return to Iraq by Qasim three years earlier, began engaging Iraqi government forces and establishing Kurdish control in the north in what was the beginning of the First Kurdish Iraqi War.

Kurdish activist Joan Salihi tweeted

A Kurdish newspaper based in the Kurdish capital estimates that around 50,000 Turks are now living in Kurdistan.

The Geneva talks had also enabled him to hold separate meetings with the Permanent Representatives of Kuwait, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States of America, a representative of the Kurdish Regional Government and members of international NGOs.

Regional acceptance of a Kurdish state building project that transcends today s KRG controlled borders would depend, among other things, on the scale of the Kurds national ambitions.

Kurdish women protested against this act .

In 2009, the Supreme Court dissolved the main legal Kurdish party, the DST, accused of being connected with the Kurdish guerillas.

The Kurdish forces included primarily the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (KDPI) and the leftist Komala (Revolutionary Organization of Kurdish Toilers).

Kurdish forces take on the Islamic State

Another Kurdish activist, tweeted this picture, showing Turkish riot police firing tear gas and Kurdish youth responding with stones out of anger and frustration that they can't even celebrate the Kurdish new year without being attacked

In those conditions, a group of Kurdish religious men formed a political organization on the bases of Islamic and Kurdish nationalistic ideas.

The Kurdish and Arab Shia religious parties sought a very weak central government in Baghdad, the latter because they feared a return to Sunni minority rule.

In the aftermath of the First Kurdish Iraqi War, a peace plan was announced in March 1970 and provided for broader Kurdish autonomy.

Ayub Nuri writes on the Kurdish website Rudaw

But Turkey s Kurdish problem cannot be solved by military means. It can be resolved only by dialogue between the Turkish government and the leaders of the Iraqi Kurds, as well as by economic and political measures designed to improve the living conditions and political rights of Turkey s Kurdish population.

The short lived pro Nazi government of Iraq was defeated in May 1941 by the allied forces (with local Assyrian and Kurdish help) in Anglo Iraqi War.

As Kurdish activist Dilar Dirik argued in The Kurdish Question The people of Kobane were massively outgunned. But their will to fight kept them going.

It ... means that the US has decided to by pass the Iraqi Central Government, ignoring the constitution and even encroaching on disputed major oilfields outside the Kurdish Region.

Kurdish Women mark Newroz in the Turkish capital Ankara.

The Indian Body. The Kurdish Body. The Pakistani Body.