Weekly news update 13-17 June

Muqtada al Sadr orders the resignation of 73 of his MPs

Muqtada al Sadr, ordered his 73 Members of Parliament to resign. Despite the spectacular nature of the act, substantially for the process to form the government it has little impact. The second biggest group in parliament would then replace Sadr's MPs. While some media outlets claimed a civil war is coming, given the ongoing fight against ISIS, and the fact that an "inter-shia'' civil war would pull in Kurds and Sunnis, such a conflict is deemed as highly undesirable and improbable. Moreover, it is currently recess time and that means that the goverment forming process is temporarily stopped until the end of the summer, meaning that the intended outcome of Sadr's order might be a strategic move to gain the upper hand in further negotiations.

Turkish airstrikes kill 12 year old

This week Turkish airstrikes on Iraq killed 2 Yazidi Iraqis including a 12 year old child. Over 4 people got injured. While Turkey continues to neglect Iraqi sovereignity, the KRG retains its strong security and economic ties with Turkey and is a supplier of their oil and gas. Turkey massively benefits from the 600,000 barrels per day of oil that are exported from Kirkuk to Turkey in the pipeline of Ceyhan. At the same time over 1,000 Turkish companies operate in the Kurdistan Region in numerous sectors, including energy and construction.  This year Iraq's federal court deemed an oil and gas law regulating the oil industry in the KRG unconstitutional and demanded that the authority hand over its crude supplies.