Turkey, Iran join to condemn Kurdish referendum

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Iranian counterpart, Hassan Rouhani, issued a joint statement today after the conclusion of their meeting in Tehran in which the two leaders declared their strong opposition to the Kurdish referendum and communicated their shared visions for addressing the major challenges of the region.

Following yesterday’s press conference in which Erdogan accused the Israeli intelligence of fuelling instability in northern Iraq while Rouhani said that a “foreign sectarian plot” was hatched to divide Iraq, the two countries united to condemn last week’s Kurdish referendum where 93 per cent of voters in Iraq’s Kurdish region wanted to separate from Baghdad.

In the joint statement they described the referendum as being “illegal and illegitimate” and called on the Kurdish province to “renew respect for the constitution, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Iraq” and annul the results.

Both Ankara and Tehran reacted angrily to last week’s referendum and the meeting in Tehran between the leaders is meant to send a strong message, having earlier expressed their disapproval of the referendum by threatening to close their borders and ordering their army to carry out military exercises near the Kurdish province.

The joint statement called on the Kurdish authorities “to avoid actions that would damage the constitutional system as well as the unity and territorial integrity of Iraq”. They also stressed their plan “to take joint steps for a fruitful fight against terrorism and organised crime”.

Read: Post-referendum Iraq… is there enough space in the cemeteries for our victims?

Both countries repeated their condemnations of the atrocities committed against the Rohingya Muslims and called on the government of Myanmar to “heed the recommendations of international organisations and the United Nations and the Organisation of the Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to respect the rights of Rohingya Muslims and allow them to inspect the situation”.

Erdogan and Rouhani then invited the international community to increase its support for the Palestinian cause, including the establishment of an independent government and Palestinian sovereignty with the Holy Quds as its capital” before condemning the “restrictive measures” imposed on the Palestinians by the Israelis “on their access to the holy sites and pressed on world leaders to show “full solidarity with the Palestinians”.