ERBIL — Kurdish prominent leader and former President of the Kurdistan Region, Masoud Barzani, has marked the fourth anniversary of the independence referendum by expressing gratitude to the people of the autonomous region for "invariably" refusing to bow down.
On 25 September 2017, a total of 3,305,925 people (72.16% turnout) in the Kurdistan Region rushed to the polling stations and casted their votes, with 92.73% of them voting in favor of independence.
On the fourth anniversary of the referendum, Barzani wrote on Twitter: "The positive response of 93% of the participants of the Kurdistan Independence Referendum was a historic achievement. On the 4th anniversary of that spectacular victory, I commend the heroic people of Kurdistan for invariably refusing to bow down."
After the tensions began to escalate between Erbil and Baghdad back in 2014, when Nouri al-Maliki, the then prime minister of Iraq, cut the Kurdistan Region's share of the federal budget while the pressure continued even throughout the costly war against the Islamic State (IS) between 2014 and 2017, during which the autonomous region's Peshmerga fighters played a decisive role alongside the US-led Coalition forces.
The tensions between Erbil and Baghdad brought the majority of the political parties in the Kurdistan Region to one table on 7 June 2017 to establish the Referendum High Council, that later announced 25 September as the day for the vote. The effort was spearheaded by the then Kurdistan President Masoud Barzani, with all sides agreeing with the fact that the time had come for the people of Kurdistan to make a decision on their fate: to either stay with Iraq or go for statehood.
"If we cannot be good political partners, then let’s be good neighbors," Barzani repeatedly said, indicating the goodwill behind the referendum, implying that Erbil did not seek war, but an amicable divorce.