The Foreign Relations Committee of the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK) released a statement calling on the Iraqi government not to be a partner in the dirty policies of the occupying Turkish state and to attach importance to friendly relations with a perspective based on the interests of the Iraqi peoples.

The KCK statement on Saturday includes the following:

"The Turkish and Iraqi governments just recently held the fourth meeting of their so-called “high-level security initiative” in Ankara. The fact that the defense minister from the Iraqi side and the interior minister of the KDP from the Kurdish regional government attended the meeting sufficiently explains the agenda and purpose of the meeting. At its end, Iraq’s foreign affairs minister, Fuad Hussein, who belongs to the KDP, stated that “any threat to neighboring countries originating from Iraqi territory is against our approval and principles. Countering these also means protecting Iraq’s sovereignty”. In other words, according to Fuad Hussein and the Iraqi government, the PKK is a threat, even though they do not mention its name. However, the PKK has never acted against Iraqi law. It has always cared about the security and interests of the Iraqi state and its peoples. Both the Iraqi state and the Iraqi people know this very well. They are the closest witnesses of the PKK’s struggle against fascist ISIS gangs at great cost. That is why the Iraqi peoples have been friendly towards the PKK, and the Iraqi state has saluted the PKK for its resistance. Given this, how is it that the PKK is suddenly seen as a movement that threatens Iraq’s security?

Obviously, the Iraqi government is deeply mistaken. It is the expansionist Turkish state that has occupied and annexed Iraqi territory hundreds of kilometers long and tens of kilometers deep. It is they who burn the nature of southern Kurdistan and the country of Iraq, who implement a policy of total destruction of nature, who forcibly displace the people, and it is they who started to control the ID’s of the citizens, affecting their daily lives and interfering in everything. It was Erdoğan and the AKP state that nurtured ISIS in Mosul and attacked Syria and Rojava. It is the Turkish state that sent military forces to Bashiqa without the approval and consent of the Iraqi state, thus settling permanently in Iraqi territory and still trying to increase its power. The Iraqi government’s failure to see this, or its consent to it and remaining completely ineffective, passive, and unresponsive to it, is incompatible with the reality of being an independent-sovereign state.

The sovereignty of Iraq has been officially trampled on by the expansionist and occupying Turkish state. The Iraqi government, instead of recognizing this, evaluating its rights arising from national and international law, and taking a stance against the expansionist and occupying Turkish state, is still setting up a “joint operation room against terrorism” in Baghdad. The decisions taken at the last security summit meeting held in Ankara mean the approval of the Turkish occupation, its perpetuation, and becoming a partner in it. It is clear that the Iraqi government, together with the expansionist and occupying Turkish state, is targeting the PKK and the Kurdistan Freedom Guerrilla. In fact, if the Iraqi state had not approved the invading Turkish state’s attack on southern Kurdistan and the establishment of dozens of bases, it would not have been possible for the invading Turkish state to act so boldly and increase its attacks despite international law.

The occupying Turkish state is trying to be effective in the Middle East with its neo-Ottomanist policy. It has a supremacist-expansionist complex that still sees many countries in the region, including Iraq, as its provinces. The main policy of the occupying Turkish state is to protect and develop its interests by creating chaos and crisis in the Middle East. For this purpose, it does not hesitate to use all kinds of ethnic and religious contradictions immorally. We call on the Iraqi government not to be a partner in these dirty policies of the occupying Turkish state and to attach importance to friendly relations with a perspective based on the interests of the Iraqi peoples."