Kurdish Quotes

There are sort of Kurdish districts there in Mosul, or there used to be, but the Kurds mostly fled or were driven out. The same is true of the Christians.

If my father was alive today, he would have fought for Kurdish rights

We ought to be providing protective sanctuaries for the Kurdish rebels. That means finding some places where they can come and to which we will then be able to provide food and water and medical help.

In 2014, everybody kind of knows that the Iraqi army fled when it was attacked by ISIS. But actually, the Kurdish Peshmerga, although they had a better reputation, fled even faster, about a month later, when they were attacked.

Аt the end of the day, unless Iran and Russia want to have a rump Allawite state and a rump Sunni state, and a Kurdish state, then they're going to have to come to the table and bring about an end to this regime.

I think what the president [Barack Obama] understands, and what he's trying to do, is that we have to support the Arab and Kurdish fighters on the ground who are actually doing the fighting.

It is the American air protection, which safeguards the freedom enjoyed by the Kurdish region. It guarantees the cultural, health and civilizational progress made in Iraqi Kurdistan.

The Kurdish minority has been cozying up to the Iranians and given the traditional hatred between the Iranians and the Iraqis, maybe Saddam Hussein sees this as a threat to his dominance of the Kurdish area north of the 36th Parallel.

The Kurdish people have the right of self-determination like every other nation in the world.

The Kurdish people welcome the no-fly zone protection, contrary to the Iraqi regime that is against it.

The US is often the first to call for transparency and integrity in the reporting of other governments. It has never provided transparency or integrity in its reporting on the war in Iraq. It has downplayed the growth of the insurgency and other civil conflicts. It exaggerated progress in the development of Iraqi forces, and has reported meaningless macroecomic figures claiming 'progress' in the face of steadily deteriorating economic conditions for most Iraqis outside the Kurdish security zone, and does so in the face of almost incredible incompetence by USAID and the Corps of Engineers.

We will send an additional 475 service members to Iraq. As I have said before, these American forces will not have a combat mission - we will not get dragged into another ground war in Iraq. But they are needed to support Iraqi and Kurdish forces with training, intelligence and equipment.

I always tell the Kurds who defend independence: Let's say we declared the independent Kurdish state and Syria, Iran, Iraq and Turkey imposed sanctions on us, without waging a war. How would we survive under those circumstances?

The Western governments will be encouraged and persuaded to deal with the real representatives and listen to the real voice of the Kurdish people.

Long-term, we must figure out a way that the Kurdish territory within Iraq operates with a certain amount of autonomy so that they feel comfortable and safe going back.

I have had it up to here with the prosecutions, the government's attitude, the judiciary, the media's stance and the majority of Turks who view the Kurdish people's justified cause through a nationalist lens.

We used to watch executions. I mentioned that in one of my stories. There was a piece of open ground near the area where we lived and we used to play soccer there. That was where they used to hold public executions for soldiers who deserted the army and members of the Kurdish resistance.

I think that all countries of the region should join their efforts in the fight against a common threat - terrorism in general and ISIS in particular. It concerns Iran as well, it concerns Saudi Arabia (although the two countries do not get along very well, ISIS threatens both of them), it concerns Jordan, it concerns Turkey (in spite of certain problems regarding the Kurdish issue), and, in my opinion, everybody is interested in resolving the situation. Our task is to join these efforts to fight against a common enemy.

We also have to intensify our air strikes against ISIS and eventually support our Arab and Kurdish partners to be able to actually take out ISIS in Raqqa, end their claim of being a Caliphate.

ISIS is a formidable foe, but the counter forces to it have only just begun and if these forces, the Iraqi army, the Kurdish Peshmerga, American air power, the Syrian Free Army, work in a coordinated fashion, it will start losing ground. Also, please keep in mind that ISIS does not actually hold as much ground as the many maps flashed on television keep showing. Large parts of those territories that ISIS supposedly controls are vacant desert.