Posted on 09/26/17
| News Source: Algemeiner
The anti-Kurdish alliance of Turkey, Iran and Iraq has stepped up its accusation that Monday’s referendum on independence — in which more than 90 percent of voters answered in the affirmative — was the fruit of a conspiracy hatched between Israeli and Kurdish leaders to create a “second Israel” in the Middle East.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who branded the referendum as “treachery” on Tuesday, said the vote would likely result in a new “ethnic war.” He warned that Ankara would break off diplomatic relations with Israel if the Jewish state refused to withdraw its support for Kurdish independence. Turkey broke relations with Israel in 2010 following the attempt by an Istabul-based Islamist organization to break the blockade of Gaza, restoring them only last year.
“Who will recognize your independence? Israel,” Erdogan mocked during a speech in Ankara on Tuesday.
“The world is not about Israel,” Erdogan — who has made numerous antisemitic remarks during the last decade — continued. “You should know that the waving of Israeli flags there will not save you,” he added, in a reference to the sight of Israeli flags flying alongside Kurdish flags at independence rallies in Erbil and other Kurdish cities.
Antisemitic rhetoric opposing the Kurdish referendum has been a staple feature of the Turkish press in recent weeks, and has been eagerly picked up by Iran as well.
On Tuesday, Ali Akbar Velayati — a former Iranian foreign minister who now serves as a senior adviser to the country’s “supreme leader,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — charged Kurdish President Masoud Barzani with being the lynchpin of an Israeli plot to destabilize the Islamic world.
“Barzani is a middleman for Zionists whose goal is to disintegrate Islamic countries,” Velayati said in Tehran, adding that like Turkey, Iran would not allow a “second Israel” to be created in the region. Maj- Gen. Yahya Rahim Safavi of the Islamic Republic’s armed forces echoed Velayati’s comments, describing the referendum as a “US-Israeli plot” that would “result in the escalation of tensions and crisis in the region.”
Meanwhile, politicians in Iraq — whose Shia-dominated government increasingly functions as a proxy of Tehran — joined in with the chorus on Tuesday, with one top official attacking Kurdish leaders as “racists.”
“The step that was taken by some racists in Kurdistan will bring instability to the entire region for years to come,” Mowaffak al-Rubaie, an MP from the ruling Shia National Alliance, told reporters in the Iraqi parliament, in remarks reported by Kurdish outlet Rudaw.
“The representatives of such efforts had established the State of Israel in 1948,” al-Rubaie said. He added that a number of Iraqi MPs were presently collecting signatures to oust Iraq’s Kurdish president, Fuad Masum, for failing to protect Iraq’s territorial integrity.