On 25th September 2017, the eligible voters of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq were given the opportunity to respond ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the question, posed in Kurdish, Turkmen, Arabic and Assyrian: “Do you want the Kurdistan Region and the Kurdistani areas outside the administration of the Region to become an independent state?” The aim of this note is to give an empirically focussed account of the independence referendum. The note has been written by four members of a delegation which spent one week in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) with the purpose of observing the referendum. The key point that we draw from these observations is that the referendum and associated aspiration for independence, which potentially could have unified the different political factions in the KRI, has in fact cruelly exposed divisions.
Until now there has been relatively little systematic analysis of the foreign relations of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). Based on interviews with senior officials of the KRG, this article places this activity within the conceptual framework of paradiplomacy. It argues that, in the framework of regional geopolitics and economic benefits for the Kurdistan Region from its place in Iraq, the practice of this paradiplomacy does not indicate an intention to secede from Iraq.
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