MPs vote to recognise new Middle Eastern state

If Palestine, why not Kurdistan?

MPs including the Labour leader, Ed Miliband, have voted to recognise Kurdistan as a state in a symbolic move that will unnerve Turkey by suggesting that it is losing a wider battle for public opinion in Britain.

In possibly the single most important contribution in an emotional debate, Richard Ottaway, the Conservative chairman of the foreign affairs select committee, said Turkey's recent air raids on Kurdish villages had angered him like nothing else in politics.

The former foreign secretary, Jack Straw, said the vote was not simply a gesture, because if it were, the Turkish government would not be as worried by the vote.

The Turkish government, he said, wants the recognition of a Kurdish state only when Hell freezes over. But Straw said “such an approach would give the Turks a veto over whether a Kurdish state should exist”. A vote for recognition would add to the pressure on the Turkish government, he said. “The only thing that the Turkish government, in my view, in its present demeanour under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan understands is pressure.”

Conservative James Clappison spoke out against the motion, arguing it would do more harm than good. He said: “I believe that international recognition of a Kurdish state in the terms of the motion would make a two-state solution less likely rather than more likely.

He said The PKK had “set its face against any peace deal with Turkey” and undertaken a “campaign of terror”.

Just wondering.