Asked what would bring all parties to the table, al-Zaidi told NIQASH that Iraqi Kurdistan needed to “annul the referendum results and the consequences, or face internal isolation”.
There have also been threats of external isolation from neighbouring countries upset by the referendum, such as Turkey and Iran.
“We consider that any kind of collective punishment by these countries against the Kurdish region to be illegitimate,” Safeen Dizayee, the spokesperson for the Iraqi Kurdish government, told NIQASH. “We hope these threats do not become reality.”
In fact, Dizayee believes that shared economic, security and political interests will prevent Iraqi Kurdistan from being isolated by international allies and enemies alike. However, he concedes that the region’s relationships with Iran and Turkey are going to be more complicated from now on, and that certainly they will be different than before the referendum.
Other politicians in Iraqi Kurdistan have different concerns. A senior member of the Change movement, Samal Abdullah, says that his party is now engaged in discussions about the future of Iraqi Kurdistan after the referendum.
They have not forgotten their misgivings about the process either, he added; the Change movement have long said that the current president of Iraqi Kurdistan, Massoud Barzani, the prime mover behind the referendum, is holding the position illegally.
“Our views on the region’s law, government reforms and the legal situation regarding the presidency have not changed,” Abdullah told NIQASH. But as has often been the case in the past in parliament in Baghdad, the Kurdish cause overrides all other considerations and the Kurds will be sticking together in the face of foreign aggressors.
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