Iran, Turkey slam controversial Kurdish stamp marking Pope’s visit to Iraq

Iran and Turkey have strongly censured the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) for its reported plans to print a contentious postage stamp commemorating Pope Francis’ recent trip to the Iraqi semi-autonomous region.

On March 5-8, the head of the Roman Catholic Church made a historic visit to Iraq and its northern Kurdistan region, where he met with senior officials and held prayers and masses.

The KRG’s Ministry of Transportation and Communication issued six stamps to mark the visit. One of the stamps depicts a map of the so-called “Greater Kurdistan,” which includes the Kurdish-majority parts of Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey, behind a likeness of the pontiff.

“It is crystal-clear that what is published is against international principles and rules,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said on Wednesday.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran has issued a protest to the Iraqi government over the matter and demanded that the stamps be recalled and this unfriendly act be immediately corrected.”

Additionally on Wednesday, Turkey’s Foreign Ministry said that one of the KRG’s commemorative stamps shows a map that “includes some provinces in our country,” calling on Kurdish authorities to “correct the grave error.”

“Certain presumptuous authorities in the KRG dared to abuse the mentioned visit, to express their unrealistic aspirations against the territorial integrity of Iraq’s neighboring countries,” it said in a statement.

“KRG authorities are in the best position to remember the disappointing outcomes of such deceitful aims,” it added.

Similarly, the head of the Iraqi Turkmen Front released a statement, condemning the KRG’s move as “threatening to the territorial integrity of Iraq, including the governorates of Kirkuk and Mosul. This step is considered a direct threat to Iraqi, regional and international security.”

“We advise the regional government and the Kurdish political parties to preserve the security and unity of Iraq and the region and not to repeat the mistakes of the past,” he said, in a vague reference to the region’s abortive push for secession in 2017. 

Iran, Iraq, Turkey warn Kurds against referendum

Iran, Iraq and Turkey have voiced concerns over a planned secession referendum in the northern Iraqi Kurdistan region.

Reacting to criticisms about the stamp, KRG spokesperson Jutyar Adil tried to distance the local government from the designs and claimed they “were submitted by artists” and that “none of them have been officially approved.”

“The regional government, in the spirit of protecting Iraqi sovereignty and its neighboring countries, will study and decide on issuing any postage stamp candidates and all that has come so far are mere proposals,” he told a press conference.

The KRG’s Minister of Transportation and Communication Ano Abdoka also stressed that the designs “are not final” and that the ministry’s work is “always within the framework of respecting the constitution and the national sovereignty of Iraq, land and people.”

On September 25, 2017, the KRG held a non-binding referendum on secession from Iraq despite strong opposition from Iraqi authorities, the international community, and Iraq’s neighboring countries.

The Iraqi parliament had ruled the vote unconstitutional beforehand.

The region then refused to hand over its airports and border crossings to Baghdad as it was ordered, triggering a military escalation. It eventually accepted Baghdad's conditions, and took its paramilitary forces out of much of the territory it controlled.

Former KRG president Masoud Barzani resigned from his post after seeing his campaign for the secession going awry.

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