‘We do not Appreciate Erdogan’s Interference’

Answering questions of the reporters, Talabani said: "Kirkuk is very important for Kurds. Therefore, we participated in the elections on a single list. The unofficial election result in Kirkuk is 75 percent for the Kurds. It was claimed that there were four million Turkmen living in Kirkuk but this has been shown false in the elections. It was a free vote free of intimidation in Kirkuk, the results are the real election results."

Talabani repeated his position after Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s remarks on Kirkuk: "I know Erdogan. He is a good politician. I think there is a mistake in the translation of those remarks. We did not like it. This country has borders. Nobody has the right to intervene in the internal affairs of nother country. If Turks claim any rights over Kirkuk today, tomorrow the Arabs may claim rights over Antakya and the Kurds could claim Diyarbakir. No one should forget that it’s impossible to form a democracy in Iraq without the Kurds."

Iraqi Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) leader Masoud Barzani announced that they had determined a list including 165 individuals with Talabani at the top to make as many Kurds as possible participate in the Iraqi parliament. Barzani said: "We, as all Kurds, supported this list. After the official anouncement of the Iraqi elections, Kurds who formerly had had two separate parliaments will now have a single parliament and administration."