Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu has said he called the representative of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), which is the party of Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) President Massoud Barzani, and told him not to come to Turkey, the Karar daily reported on Tuesday.
According to the report Çavuşoğlu said Turkey would act together with Baghdad in the event a threatening situation developed.
“Our interlocutor from now on is Baghdad. We told the representative of the KDP not to come to Turkey,” he said.
Speaking during an interview with NTV, Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım said Turkey is determined to take action if its national security is threatened.
“We will not enter into an adventure unexpectedly in any way, but if there is a position that will harm the interests of our country, then we will respond without delay,” Yıldırım said.
“We will from now on consider only the central government in Baghdad as a legitimate interlocutor, not the KRG based in Arbil,” he added.
Despite warnings from the Baghdad administration and abroad, including from Ankara and Washington, the KRG held a referendum on Monday for a separate Kurdistan state in northern Iraq.
The results show that 93.29 percent of 282,017 people voted in favor of separation from Baghdad and the formation of an independent Kurdistan state.
Calling the decision to hold the independence referendum on Monday an act of “treason” against Turkey, President Tayyip Erdoğan said the rate of participation in the referendum and the results were suspicious.
“Those who are provoking you today will leave you alone tomorrow, but we will continue to live together for thousands of years. Don’t destroy your tomorrow by your ambition today. The fact that Israeli flags are waving there will not save you, you should know that,” Erdoğan said.
Arguing that the majority of “yes” votes in the referendum do not have any value since no country other than Israel recognizes the results, Erdoğan threatened the KRG with cutting off oil exports from the Kurdistan region and economic sanctions.