Tommy Broughan (Dublin Bay North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

It is interesting to hear that the Minister was in Erbil. In 1920, Kurdistan was to be established as an independent state but, following the treaty of Lausanne after the disastrous Greek-Turkish war, the opportunity was lost. I asked the previous Minister, Deputy Flanagan, whether the annual report on Turkey had been received by the Foreign Affairs Council, particularly in relation to the wave of repression that occurred in Turkey following the attempted coup in 2016. The Minister said that, in one of the few positive elements of the Iraq war, the autonomous region of Kurdistan had emerged. Do we have any specific relationship with that region? I note what the Minister said about the referendum and the large numbers of Kurdish people in Syrian and Iran, where there has been similarly severe repression over the decades.

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