July 20, 2007 | By BEN LANDO | UPI Energy Correspondent

WASHINGTON, July 20 (UPI) -- A voter registration list of residents in Iraq's oil-rich northern disputed territories is to be completed by the end of July. It marks a long-awaited step for Iraq's Kurds, who claim the area was ripped from them by Saddam Hussein's policies.


  


January 11, 2009 | By Ned Parker

Reporting from Salahuddin, Iraq -- The president of Iraq's Kurdish region charged Saturday that Prime Minister Nouri Maliki was drifting toward authoritarian rule, in the latest sign of the dangerous rift that has emerged between the Iraqi leader and his partners in the country's ruling coalition.

Massoud Barzani, head of the Kurdish semiautonomous region, says moves by Prime Minister Nouri Maliki threaten the nation's unity and have raised concerns among the Kurdish minority.


  


January 31st 2008 | Ankara and Diyarbakir | From The Economist print edition

The AK government uses Islam to win over Kurdish support

A SIGN adorned with Ataturk's favourite adage, “Happy is he who calls himself a Turk”, hangs in Diyarbakir, south-east Turkey, as a reminder of Turkey's decades-old policy of forcibly assimilating the region's Kurds. The ruling Justice and Development (AK) party might prefer “Happy is he who calls himself a Muslim”.


  


Wednesday, 18 July 2007, 04:05 EDT
By The Globe- Erbil

Crises in the region and Iraq dominate Barzani's meeting with Iraqi lawmaker.


  



Thursday, October 11, 2007  | The Associated Press

ANKARA, Turkey: Mehmed Uzun, a Kurdish novelist who was prosecuted for criticizing Turkey's ban on the Kurdish language, died on Thursday, a friend said. He was 54.


  


April 17, 2008 | Bitterlemons-International.org | Steven A. Cook, Douglas Dillon Fellow

With all the attention in Iraq over the last five years focused on the fate of al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the conflict between Sunni and Shi’ite, the role of Iran, the security of Anbar province, the “surge” and, most recently, the further deterioration of Basra, the situation in northern Iraq has only received sporadic attention.


  


5 september 2007

Diyarbakır Mayor Osman Baydemir was the recipient of harsh words from the government and the opposition Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) yesterday after he complained his southeastern city was subject to discrimination and declared his pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) was ready if the government wants to launch a war on Diyarbakır.

  


Tuesday, 26 February 2008

The Iraqi government has denounced a Turkish incursion into northern Iraq in some of the strongest terms heard since the operation began last week.


  


10 March 2008 | Ilnur Cevik

President Talabani is in Ankara. However, his visit is not a state visit but a working visit. This is so simply because he is a Kurd. Turkey has to get rid of this Kurdish phobia if its wants to solve its own Kurdish problem.


  

[September 4, 2005] A group of nationalist Turks attacked dozens of buses carrying pro-Kurdish demonstrators with stones on Sunday, following violent clashes between Kurdish demonstrators and police in Istanbul, reports said.