South Kurdistan remains naturally dependent on the Iraqi State, but due to the weakness of the State, it functions de facto as an independent State. Kirkuk, meanwhile, is currently the province of Iraq, but half of its population is Kurdish, and regions with a large Kurdish population are allowed to hold such referendums under the Iraqi Constitution drafted in 2005. Twenty-six of the 41 members of the Kirkuk House voted to hold a referendum, according to News. La Vanguardia explains that both decisions have caused a complaint from the Iraqi rulers.

On April 2, Rudaw announced that the government of South Kurdistan had decided to hold a referendum. The independence referendum is the result of changes in the political map of South Kurdistan in recent years. Bipartisanship has ruled there over the years, but the 2009 Gorran (Change) party has emerged and entered strongly into the institutions. This has forced the traditional parties to move, for example, to take on one of Gorran’s demands, the independence referendum.

Movements in Kirkuk

Kirkuk also announced the referendum in early April. They are a province north of Baghdad and a city of the same name, and it is very rich in oil wells. When the Islamic State offensive reached this city, the Iraqi Army fled and the security forces of South Kurdistan were forced to liberate the neighboring province.

 

The decision to hold a referendum has provoked controversy, as the Kirkuk Council decided on 28 March to install a Kurdish flag in public buildings. Both decisions have raised concerns in Iraq and there have also been some international reactions.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has called on provincial authorities to remove Kurdish flags; reactions have been received by the Rudaw media. The Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has also done so. “If you don’t remove the Kurdish flag you will pay dearly,” he threatens.

Believing that it will affect the Kurdish conflict under Turkey, Erdogan considers anything that increases the autonomy of the Kurds as a threat. However, while the Kurds of North Kurdistan are at war with Turkey, the authorities of South Kurdistan have good political and economic relations with Erdogan. Moreover, the relationship between those fighting in North Kurdistan and the government of South Kurdistan is quite spinous.

In South Kurdistan, a piece of geopolitics

In the turbulent geopolitics of the Middle East, powers such as the US have taken advantage of the stateless Kurdistan nation’s issue in their own interest. International experts Noam Chomsky and Gilbert Achcar explain that when Iraq was invaded in 2003, the United States began to seek allies within the country to rebuild what had been destroyed at will. Experts say the U.S. is interested in Iraq—and the Middle East—a jugoslabized, segregated into weak entities that can be controlled at will.

The Kurds suffered great oppression under the Jacobinist state of Saddam Hussein, which promoted a single national identity, but at the same time it was an opportunity for them to empower themselves. The leaders of South Kurdistan became representatives of the United States in the newly formed Iraqi Parliament, say Chomsky and Achcar.

Fifteen years of continuous conflict that has combined the invasion, sectarian and geopolitical conflicts, the Islamic State, has left the Iraqi state very weak, and so South Kurdistan has managed to function as an autonomous state. With the support they have received from the United States, they have been able to develop their own state structures; as well as their own army, known as the peshmerga.

 

The fact that the Iraqi Constitution was drafted under U.S. invasion and influence also explains why Kirkuk was given the opportunity to hold a referendum in the text.

In this case, the exercise of the right of self-determination would further weaken the Iraqi state and bring an oil-rich region closer to the U.S. sphere of influence.