Armenian Assembly salutes Iraqi Kurdish referendum and results

PanARMENIAN.Net - The Armenian Assembly of America (Assembly) salutes Iraqi Kurdistan's referendum on independence and its results, where the people voted for three provinces of northern Iraq to become part of the sovereign Iraqi Kurdistan, the Assembly said in a statement on Wednesday, September 27.

On September 25, CNN and other new services are reporting that: "The first results should be known within 72 hours. Kurdish election officials said 72% of eligible voters had cast their votes in the referendum. The Kurdistan Regional Government, which administers a semi-autonomous region in northern Iraq, says the referendum will give it a mandate to achieve independence from Iraq."

The Kurdish people have treated Armenians who reside within its territory in Iraq well throughout the years, the Assembly said.

"There are just a few of us in Kurdistan. But thanks to God, we have been given most of our rights," Ishkhan Milko, an Armenian member of the Duhok Provincial Council, told Rudaw, "We have a seat in the Kurdistan parliament as well as a seat in the Duhok Provincial Council."

Many Armenians ended up in northern Iraq as a result of deportations during the 1915 Armenian Genocide. Even though some Kurdish communities were exploited and encouraged by the Turkish Ottoman regime to attack the caravans of Armenians, many Kurds refused and instead rescued them from death, the statement said.

Kurdish officials have also issued statements expressing their condolences for the Armenian Genocide. According to journalist Christopher Hitchens' article in Slate, he wrote that: "In 1991, in northern Iraq, where you could still see and smell the gassed and poisoned towns and villages of Kurdistan, I heard Jalal Talabani of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan say that Kurds ought to apologize to the Armenians for the role they had played as enforcers for the Ottomans during the time of the Genocide. Talabani, who has often repeated that statement, is now [2007] president of Iraq." Hitchens went on to note: "I would regard his unforced statement as evidence in itself, by the way, in that proud peoples do not generally offer to apologize for revolting crimes that they did not, in fact, commit."

In 2007, Iraqi Kurdistan President Massoud Barzani published his father's memoirs about the Armenian Genocide and mass deportation of Armenians. In his writings, his father described how his brigade aided the Armenians and accompanied them to the border of Syria while they were confronted by Turkish forces, and ultimately suffered casualties.

Today, the Assembly said, Kurds in Turkey recognize the Armenian Genocide, commemorate the victims, and often call on the Turkish government to apologize to Armenian people.

In addition to being strong advocates for human rights and standing up against Genocide, the Kurdish people in the region have been a bulwark against ISIS and have pledged to protect minorities.