“Turkey's borders are definite,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Burak Özügergin said in a statement. He was responding to a question on an International Crisis Group report suggesting that Iraqi Kurds want to join Turkey, as their main protector, the US, prepares to pull out troops from Iraq amid growing disagreements with the Iraqi central government.
“Such debates should not be heeded,” Özügergin said. “Turkey has expressed the importance it attaches to the territorial integrity and unity of Iraq on every occasion.”
The ICG report said the upcoming US withdrawal and disputes between the Kurdish administration and the Baghdad government have revived the notion of “Mosul vilayet,” Iraq's old Mosul province to which post-Ottoman Turkey laid claim. It quoted a senior Kurdish official as saying: “We have the right to be independent, but if that doesn't work out, then I'd rather be with Turkey than Iraq, because Iraq is undemocratic.” The best way forward, he said, was for “the Kurdistan region to join Turkey as part of a new Mosul vilayet and for Turkey to join the EU, with a solution for the situation of the Kurds in Turkey.”
