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ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Hundreds of Kurds attended a national carnival on Tuesday in the capital city of Erbil to support a referendum on Kurdish independence and to end the Sykes-Picot agreement, which divided Kurds into four parts a century ago.
Rudaw reporter Ranja Jamal said the attendees paraded to the city’s historical citadel following a group of men in Kurdish dress carrying a coffin that read ‘Sykes-Picot’ as a symbolic way to show that Kurds in Iraq have buried the hundred-years-old treaty.
Playing Kurdish music and waving Kurdistan flags, retired Peshmerga walked side by side with young Kurds who chanted, “Yes to referendum!”
President of the Kurdistan Region, Masoud Barzani, has also stated that the treaty no longer exists.
Barzani said on Monday that the world owes responsibility for a “real resolution” for Iraq’s continued suffering, adding that the Kurds should live as “friends” with Baghdad if the partnership that is Iraq fails.
“We should admit that the concept of citizenship did not come forth, and the borders have no meaning anymore. It means Sykes-Picot is over,” Barzani explained.
He said that Sykes-Picot, the secret treaty that divided the Middle East into Anglo and French spheres of influence by drawing arbitrary borders across the region after the First World War, had brought nothing but war, instability, violence, and discrimination.
For years, Kurdistan has been locked in serious rows with the Shiite-led central government in Baghdad over oil exports, the state budget, territorial issues, and Kurds one day declaring independence.
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