Kurdistan Regin Deputy Prime Minister Qubad Talabani on Thursday in Greece addressed the annual Delphi Economic Forum 2023 by joining a Q&A session about a wide range of issues related to the Kurdistan Region and Iraq, including the relations with the Syrian Kurds, Gender Equality, Kurdistan energy reserves, and so forth. Here is an edited transcribe:
Transcribed by Shad Sherko
Questioner: join me in welcoming a person who loves Greece and whom Greece loves, so Deputy Prime Minister Qubad Talabani welcome to us.
Qubad Talabani: thank you very much, it’s an absolute pleasure to be back here again and I thank the president for the kind invitation, and it’s my second Delphi forum and I’m delighted to be back in a beautiful country with beautiful people and good friends.
Questioner: You know Mr. Talabani is first of all a reformer, why, because he’s a champion of digital transformation, he’s a champion of gender equity, he’s a champion of religious tolerance in a very difficult region in very turbulent times, so he’s against stereotypes and he’s bold enough to take his society the society you’re letting governor a step forward right, he’s the Deputy Prime Minister.
Qubad Talabani: That’s very kind of you to say.
Questioner: So I was studying about Kurdistan and you know the first question I want to ask is the following, so you’re a landlocked country in a very complex international environment in the regional environment, you have Turkey you have Iran you have I mean all foreign powers, so what is your role about Kurdistan and your personal role as a Kurd in doing some leap forwards for your people?
Qubad Talabani: Well you said we’re we are landlocked and we have complicated neighbors and we have a difficult geopolitical situation in a region that is turmoil and quite turbulent and we have to navigate this and it’s evident to anyone watching that we are not the most powerful in the area and we never strive to be, we have to survive by being smarter, by having wise policies, by having good relations, by reaching out to all sides, by not taking one side or another, be in a geopolitical conflict a regional conflict or a local conflict, so that’s for us the imperative is surviving, the imperative is making the most of a very difficult situation, and the imperative is trying to provide the best services to our people that you know have gone through significant atrocities in history.
Questioner: You know your Region is full of resources, oil and gas and, especially in your city Sulaimani, you know if I’m not mistaken I mean you have three percent of the global resources of gas, so in Europe, the public debate is dominated by you know strategic autonomy and they need to diversify our energy resources and stuff, can you be an alternative?
Qubad Talabani: No, I’m sorry to say, primarily because we have significant domestic energy needs, yes we set upon a very large gas reserve that is untapped and undeveloped, it is being developed now but we still live in a country that doesn’t have 24 hours of electricity, so for us, the priority has to be the domestic needs and if we can meet those domestic needs have 24 hours of electricity to meet the industrial needs that our factories demand to get away from environment-damaging fuels and move towards cleaner natural gas as we power our Industries, I’m sure in time as we develop there will be extra reserves that could be exported that could be transferred into electricity that could be swapped that we could be more strategic about. I wish I could sit here and solve the World’s energy Problems by saying we can be an alternative but I think it is unwise unrealistic and irresponsible to say that.
Questioner: I’ve heard you saying that you didn’t have these resources, why that statement?
Qubad Talabani: We’ve all had a Dutch disease apologize for any Dutch people here I didn’t coin it they themselves coined it, but natural resources; oil gas has a tendency to make governments lazy, and a time of high oil prices is very easy to be overly dependent on oil, we have been both as a country is a federal country also as a Region and that has been a reason why many other important sectors of our society have been neglected, and why our economy is completely dependent on the mood of the market, oil prices are high revenues are higher, oil prices are low we have a massive deficit, so we have to be thankful that we have this resource but we have to be much smarter in diversifying from this resource and relying on the natural beauty that Kurdistan offers not unlike Greece makes use of the tourism potential, make use of the very fertile land and good climate that we have a focus on agriculture and Agro Industries, we realize that we are not just a landlocked isolated sub-sovereign within a turbulent country but realize that we could potentially provide food for the entire country, we have a market of over 40 million people that we could provide food for so that for us that’s why I wish we didn’t have the oil because if we didn’t have the oil we would be focusing more on these other sectors and that’s a little late but we are now doing that.
Questioner: We discussed the complex regional environment and now I will get you to the complex domestic environment in Iraq, I know there are some disputed with Baghdad and also some differences inside Kurdistan about we are dealing with Baghdad, so what’s the right way to deal with Baghdad?
Qubad Talabani: So I think the theme of this conference has been a paradigm shift, and I believe it’s fair to say that we have had a paradigm shift of our own, whereas in years past we were much more independent thinking, looking towards political Independence, looking towards economic independence , and this this was great emotionally as a Kurd everybody wants that, but the geopolitics has a way of hurting you, as a way of making you realize that you have to be smarter and less emotional, so the paradigm shift for many of us is now, rather than be separate from Baghdad let’s be influential in Baghdad, rather than be in conflict with Baghdad, let’s make Baghdad be less confrontational with the Region, go back to what we used to be like in 2003-2006 we were king makers in Baghdad, the Kurds used to decide who the prime minister of Iraq was, the Kurds would be the final say in in major policy disputes, but from let’s say I’ll say the last ten years or so we have we have lessened that focus and we need to go back to that because that’s where our strength is, if we can be influential in Iraq and make sure Iraq is a stable country, a sensible country that has sound policies Regional domestic and international, that can secure kurdistan’s future that can secure Kurdistan’s economic future that can secure Kurdistan’s fiscal security, and I think this is the paradigm shift that we have forcefully or eventually had to take, and I believe we are now supporting the Sudani government, we are trying to make the federal government better, better policies, and that’s for us a change because maybe if I had a come here five years ago I would have been saying something else.
Questioner: You know I have many questions but I have to prioritize, so gender equality that’s a term very popular in the West not very popular in the Middle East but your champion in gender equality.
Qubad Talabani: I believe in equality between men and women in Kurdistan, I believe that women have played, will play, and can play an even more important role in society and government and business in security in all sectors of life and that that’s been a personal belief, I was lucky I grew up in a very liberal family with very strong women in my family which probably helped shape my views, I’m not alone many other men in Kurdistan believe that there is equality between men and women. In face, the Kurdish term for husband and wife is “Hawsar” which means “co-head” which if you look if you think about the root of the word “co-head” of a family it is about as much gender equality as you can get, but that tells you our culture is not one where we have the Kurdish histories has never been one where women have been marginalized, Kurdish culture is history is full of strong powerful women that have shaped the Kurdistan of today, but lately, for whatever reason, we’ve seen more violence against women we’ve seen more gender-based violence we’ve seen increases of domestic violence, covid had a massive impact on this where people were stuck at home, so getting our society to be more aware but this is not the way forward that if we want an effective government that if we want to have an effective society that if we want a strong economy there really has to be equality.
Questioner: You know of course Kurdish culture is a lot about equality but your governance is a lot about digitization, so what are you doing to get public services and Society digitally in Kurdistan?
Qubad Talabani: It’s been a real focus of mine ever since I went back to Kurdistan about ten years ago, because I came back and saw a very dysfunctional government, very bureaucratic government overly dependent on paper, overly dependent on manual processes, and when you have a big government when you have a bureaucratic government it spreads corruption, it is the easiest way for corruption to manifest is through bureaucracy, if it takes you 17 steps to get something done it takes one person in that chain of 17 to be corrupt to hold the whole process up, so I focused on a streamlining process where we streamlined government services try to reduce the number of steps but also to make them more transparent by digitizing them, so if it’s digital and transparent everybody knows what you actually need to do to renew a driver’s license, what you need to do to register a company, and it’s open for everybody to see it’s very hard for somebody to be corrupt in a chain of three, in the chain of 17, a corrupt official can hide in that process, but when it takes three steps to get something done, official have to be very brave to try to be corrupt in that process, so I believe that streamlining and digitization is the best way to root out corruption, a lot of governments focus on the prosecution side of things and they like to get catch the big fish and put them on TV and say here we go we found a corrupt Minister, that doesn’t solve corruption, you make a better more efficient government that’s how you limit corruption, and you make corruption more difficult to manifest and to spread.
Questioner: So there are some rumors spread that your assistant of course from some other parts, and some states have become also hostile towards the Kurdistan Region, so how do you respond to them, and how you will resolve this?
Qubad Talabani: I think he was referring to the Kurds of Syria in this process, we have a bond with the Kurds of Syria, we’re in the same fight with them against terrorism, we fought ISIS together, they’re fighting ISIS in Syria, we fought and are still fighting ISIS in Iraq, and that we’ve never been shy about expressing our solidarity with the Kurds of Syria to fight terrorism, that has a tendency to upset some of our neighbors and we just have to continue to explain to them that this is not against them, we want a good relationship with all of our neighbors that is the quickest and best way to secure the stability in the future of the Kurdistan region, we can’t be at odds with Turkey, we can’t be at odds with Iran, we shouldn’t be at odds with our host country Iraq, so that’s for us that’s the vision, and we need to be transparent, and we tell we’re very good friends with the US government, successive administrations, we tell them about our relationship with Iran, we tell the Iranians about our relationship with the Americans, we don’t do these things secretly.
Questioner: If I have to put a subtitle in your position I would say I mean navigating complexities. We thank the Deputy Prime Minister for being with us for the second year in a row.
