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Iraq and the Kurds: What Threats to European Stability?

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Managing Security Threats along the EU’s Eastern Flanks

Part of the book series: New Security Challenges ((NSECH))

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Abstract

The chapter examines European conceptions of threat emanating from Iraq, with a particular focus on the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG). It looks at Turkey’s recent role in Northern Iraq from the mid-2000s onwards and up until the 2017 referendum, while also examining regional cooperation from the perspectives of the US, the European Union (EU) and Russia. It looks at the EU’s new development role and economic support inside of Iraq and the KRG, including the importance of migration, de-radicalisation, energy projects and local alliances. The research is supported by secondary legal literature on trade agreements and interviews with EU and Turkish policymakers, including Kurdish political representatives from Iraq and Syria.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See Chap. 1 in this volume. The ENP was outlined in the Joint Communication on 25 May 2011 and provides foreign policy guidance and financial support under the technical assistance of the European Neighbourhood Instrument (ENI). It helps develop regional affairs and, more specifically, deals with the EU’s 16 bordering and partner countries across the EU’s southern and eastern neighbourhoods, ranging from Morocco and Syria to Israel, Ukraine and Belarus.

  2. 2.

    It is estimated that approximately 13.4% of Turkey is ethnically and/or linguistically Kurdish. Demographically, the Kurdish population, in what the Turkish General Directorate of Civil Registration and Nationality refers to as Southeast Anatolia (TRC Güneydoğu Anadolu), continued to grow at high rates of 3.37 in 2016.

  3. 3.

    ‘Iraq’s Constitution of 2005’, Constitute, Special, Comparative Constitutions Project (2005), p. 42. Online: https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/Iraq_2005.pdf?lang=en.

  4. 4.

    William Hale, Turkish Foreign Policy since 1774 (London: Routledge, 2012), pp. 235–236.

  5. 5.

    ‘Iran and Iraq. The Shia Connection, Soft Power, and the Nuclear Factor’, United States Institute of Peace, Special Report 156 (November 2005), p. 18.

  6. 6.

    ‘Iran and Iraq. The Shia Connection, Soft Power, and the Nuclear Factor’, United States Institute of Peace, Special Report 156 (November 2005), p. 2.

  7. 7.

    Aram Nerguizian, ‘Turkish-Arab Economic and Military Cooperation: How Far Will It Go?’, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (December 2010). Online: http://carnegieendowment.org/sada/?fa=42145.

  8. 8.

    The KDP was founded by Mustafa Barzani in 1946 and continues to be the KRG’s largest Kurdish political party. Traditionally, it holds moderate-conservative views, while engaging with the private sector and international companies, including ones from Turkey.

  9. 9.

    The Ergenekon trials were a series of Turkish court indictments that are believed to have curbed back the powers of the Turkish Armed Forces during 2008–2009. At the height of the trials, maxi courtrooms reportedly trialled hundreds of military personnel, journalists and opposition members for allegedly participating in ‘secular clandestine networks’ aimed at overthrowing the Turkish government.

  10. 10.

    ‘Managing Turkey’s PKK Conflict: The Case of Nusaybin’, International Crisis Group, Report 243 (2 May 2017), p. 4.

  11. 11.

    ‘HDP’li Vekil Abdullah Zeydan: PKK sizi tükürüğüyle boğar’, Milliyet, 27 July 2015, available at: http://www.milliyet.com.tr/hdp-li-vekil-abdullah-zeydan-pkk/siyaset/detay/2093162/default.htm.

  12. 12.

    Turkey’s electoral system disfavours small parties, as the electoral law requires for political seats won in a general election by a given political party to be reallocated to larger parties unless the given (smaller) party receives a minimum of 10% of the vote. The outcome of the November 2015 election came very close to barring parliamentary representation of the HDP in Turkey’s parliament, due to the aforementioned reason.

  13. 13.

    ‘Republic of Turkey, Early Parliamentary Elections, 1 November 2015’, OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, OSCE/ODIHR Limited Election Observation Mission Final Report (28 January 2016), pp. 11–13.

  14. 14.

    Michael M. Gunter, The Kurds and the Future of Turkey (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1997), p. 147.

  15. 15.

    Kemal Kirişci, Nathalie Tocci and Joshua Walker, ‘A Neighbourhood Rediscovered: Turkey’s Transatlantic Value in the Middle East’, German Marshall Fund of the United States, Brussels Forum Paper Series (March 2010), p. 27.

  16. 16.

    Da’esh is more commonly known as Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) or simply Islamic State (IS).

  17. 17.

    The KRI is a federal region in Iraq, consisting of Dohuk, Erbil and Suleimaniyah governorates. To avoid confusion, the term ‘KRG’ is used throughout this chapter to refer to the constitutionally defined federal Iraqi region of Kurdistan region of Iraq.

  18. 18.

    Soner Cagaptay, Christina Bache Fidan and Ege Cancu Sacikara, ‘Turkey and the KRG: An Undeclared economic commonwealth’, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy (16 March 2017), p. 3.

  19. 19.

    Robin Mills, ‘Under the Mountains: Kurdish Oil and Regional Politics’, The Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, OIES PAPER: WPM 63 (January 2016), p. 9.

  20. 20.

    Robin Mills, ‘Under the Mountains: Kurdish Oil and Regional Politics’, The Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, OIES PAPER: WPM 63 (January 2016), pp. 8–10 and 23.

  21. 21.

    Nathalie Tocci, ‘Turkey and the European Union: Scenarios for 2030’, Istituto Affari Internazionali, FEUTURE Background Paper (September 2016), pp. 5–10.

  22. 22.

    Christina Bache Fidan, ‘Turkish business in the Kurdistan region of Iraq’, Turkish Policy Quarter (Winter 2016), p. 2.

  23. 23.

    Anthony C. Ross, Michael L. Hanse, Krishna B. Kumar, Howard J. Shatz and Georges Vernez, ‘Building the future: Summary of four studies to develop the private sector, education, health care, and data for decisionmaking for the Kurdistan Region – Iraq’, RAND Corporation and Kurdistan Regional Government (2012), pp. 3–4.

  24. 24.

    Omar Mawji, ‘Iraqi Kurdistan’s Oil Industry & Autonomy’, Palisade Research (April 2016), p. 3.

  25. 25.

    ‘Iraq’, available at: https://www.eia.gov/beta/international/analysis.cfm?iso=IRQ, last accessed 3 June 2019.

  26. 26.

    ‘Turkey’s Energy Profile and Strategy’, available at: http://www.mfa.gov.tr/turkeys-energy-strategy.en.mfa, last accessed 3 June 2019.

  27. 27.

    Hazal Ateş, ‘Kuzey Irak’la ticareti uçuracak 4 hamle’, Sabah, 30 April 2016, available at: www.sabah.com.tr/ekonomi/2016/04/30/kuzey-irakla-ticareti-ucuraccak-4-hamle.

  28. 28.

    ‘Official KRG Response to Statements made by Prime Minister of Iraq, Haider al-Abadi’, 17 February 2016, available at: http://cabinet.gov.krd/a/d.aspx?s=040000&l=12&a=54240, last accessed 3 June 2019.

  29. 29.

    John Beck, ‘Iraqi soldiers fleeing ISIS claim they were “abandoned” by senior officials’, Vice News, 15 June 2014, available at: https://news.vice.com/article/iraqi-soldiers-fleeing-isis-claim-they-were-abandoned-by-senior-officers.

  30. 30.

    Mario Fumerton and Wladimir Van Wilgenburg, ‘Kurdistan’s Political Armies: The challenge of unifying the Peshmerga forces’, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Regional Insight (December 2015), available at: http://carnegieendowment.org/2015/12/16/kurdistan-s-political-armies-challenge-of-unifying-peshmerga-forces-pub-61917.

  31. 31.

    Krawan Salih Waisy, ‘The roots of the Iraqi Kurdish internal rivalries, conflicts and peace process 1964–2000’, American International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, 10:3 (March–May 2015), pp. 220–221.

  32. 32.

    Costas Laotides ‘How Foreign Is the Kurdish Issue in Iran’s Foreign Policy’, in Shahram Akbarzadeh and Dara Conduit (eds) Iran in the World by (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), pp. 95–101.

  33. 33.

    Eligible referendum voters on 23 September (electronic voting) and 25 September (physical ballot voting) 2017 included Iraqi citizens having registered with the Voters’ Registration Database (E-voting database) with documented proof of being a citizen of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq under the authority of the KRG, or Kurdistani territories, which remain controversially delineated and disputed areas by Iraq’s central government and the KRG. Electronic voting by the Kurdish diaspora followed the same criteria.

  34. 34.

    ‘Referendum can be postponed only with guarantees on independence: Barzani’, Rudaw, 18 September 2017, available at: http://www.rudaw.net/english/kurdistan/1809201712.

  35. 35.

    ‘National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2018’, House of Representative 115th Congress 1st Session, Conference Report to accompany H.R. 2810 (November 2017), pp. 11–13, available at: http://docs.house.gov/billsthisweek/20171113/HRPT-115-HR2810.pdf.

  36. 36.

    ‘National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2018’, House of Representative 115th Congress 1st Session, Chairman’s Mark (23 June 2017), p. 39. http://docs.house.gov/meetings/AS/AS00/20170628/106123/BILLS-115HR2810ih.pdf.

  37. 37.

    Amy Hagopian, Abraham D. Flaxman, Tim K. Takaro, Sahar E. Al Shatari, Julie Rajaratnam, Stan Becker, Alison Levin-Rector, Lindsay Galway, Berq J. Hadi Al-Yasseri, William M. Weiss, Christopher J. Murray, and Gilbert Burnham, ‘Mortality in Iraq Associated with the 2003–2011 War and Occupation: Findings from a National Cluster Sample Survey by the University Collaborative Iraq Mortality Study’, PLOS Medicine (October 15, 2013), available at: http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1001533.

  38. 38.

    ‘Forced Displacements in 2016’, UNHCR The Refugee Agency, UNHCR GLOBAL TRENDS 2016 (19 June 2017), p. 15, available at: http://www.unhcr.org/5943e8a34.pdf.

  39. 39.

    ‘EU-Iraq Partnership and Cooperation Agreement’, Official Journal of the European Union, L204/20 (31 July 2012), available at: http://eurlex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2012:204:0020:0130:EN:PDF.

  40. 40.

    http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2006/september/tradoc_113405.pdf.

  41. 41.

    ‘Council of the European Union Conclusions on Iraq’, Foreign Affairs Council, Annex 10197/17 (19 June 2017), available at: http://www.consilium.europa.eu/media/23995/st10197en17-conclusions-on-iraq.pdf.

  42. 42.

    ‘Council of the European Union Conclusions on Iraq’, Foreign Affairs Council, Annex 10197/17 (19 June 2017), available at: http://www.consilium.europa.eu/media/23995/st10197en17-conclusions-on-iraq.pdf.

  43. 43.

    https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/09/16/european-opinions-of-the-refugee-crisis-in-5-charts/.

  44. 44.

    Eurostat, “Asylum in the EU Member States,” 4 March 2016, 1, https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/2995521/7203832/3-04032016-AP-EN.pdf/790eba01-381c-4163-bcd2-a54959b99ed6. See also Connor, Phillip, “Number of Refugees to Europe Surges to Record 1.3 Million in 2015,” Pew Research Center, 2 August 2016, http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/08/14100940/Pew-Research-Center-Europe-Asylum-Report-FINAL-August-2-2016.pdf.

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  1. European Neighbourhood Council, Brussels, Belgium

    Samuel Doveri Vesterbye

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Correspondence to Samuel Doveri Vesterbye .

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  1. School of International Relations, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, UK

    Rick Fawn

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Doveri Vesterbye, S. (2020). Iraq and the Kurds: What Threats to European Stability?. In: Fawn, R. (eds) Managing Security Threats along the EU’s Eastern Flanks . New Security Challenges. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26937-1_8

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