“The Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Region [Masrour Barzani] has expressed his concern over the incident, and has tasked KRG’s relevant authorities to intervene with their Turkish counterparts to secure the tourists' immediate release,” read the statement released by the spokesperson of the KRG, Jotiar Adil.
“The flag of the Kurdistan Region is recognized by the Iraqi Constitution, and has been previously displayed at Turkish airports to welcome official delegates from the Kurdistan Region,” the spokesperson added.
Turkey is a key tourist destination for hundreds of thousands of tourists from the autonomous Kurdistan Region and Iraq who travel to many areas of the country.
The Kurdistan Region’s parliamentary committee for Foreign Relations and Diaspora Kurds also released a statement on Friday condemning “any type of discrimination by some of the citizens of Turkey against Kurdistan [Region] tourists in Trabzon city.”
The committee also extended calls to the Turkish authorities to immediately release the detained tourists.
Early Friday evening, the director of security at the Ibrahim Khalil border checkpoint, Abdul-Wahab Barzani, told Kurdistan 24 that all nine Kurdish detainees had been freed.