ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has received an official invitation to visit Baghdad later this month to attend the Baghdad summit, Iraq’s foreign ministry said on Sunday. Iraq’s Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein on Saturday met with Erdogan in Istanbul. “The minister delivered an invitation letter from Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi to the Turkish President to attend the summit meeting scheduled at the end of this month in Baghdad at the level of leaders of Iraq’s neighboring countries,” reads a statement from the Iraqi foreign ministry. In the meeting, bilateral ties between the two countries and the situation of the region were also discussed. The invitation from PM Kadhimi comes as Turkey continues to conduct military operations against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the Kurdistan Region’s border areas of Duhok since April. The PKK is an armed group that has struggled for increased rights for Kurds in Turkey for decades. It has bases and its headquarters in the Kurdistan Region’s mountains. Turkey considers the group a terrorist organization and frequently sends its armed forces across the border. The head of the Kurdistan Region parliament’s Interior, Security and Local Councils committee told Rudaw last week that six civilians have been killed and twenty villages evacuated as a result of the Turkey-PKK conflict since the beginning of 2021. This year, Turkey has so far launched three military operations against the PKK in the Kurdistan Region. The first, dubbed Claw Eagle-2, lasted a few days in February and targeted alleged PKK positions on Mount Gara in Duhok province. It ended with the discovery of the bodies of 12 Turkish citizens captured by the PKK six years ago, and the body of one Kurd from Duhok. In late April, Turkey launched twin, large-scale ground and air operations along Duhok’s northern border with Turkey, named Claw-Lightning and Claw-Thunderbolt. They are still ongoing and are inflicting serious damage to the villages and countryside. Villagers have fled their homes, and the conflict has sparked fires that locals have found difficult to extinguish. Kadhimi and Erdogan last met in December in Ankara and discussed several topics such as boosting relations in trade, reconstruction and the “fight against terrorism.” At the time, Erdogan said they both “decided to continue our fight against our common enemies - Daesh, PKK and FETO [Fethullah Gulen’s Service Movement] terrorist organisations.” Without naming any specific groups, Kadhimi said that he condemns “any action that threatens Turkey or any threat sourcing from Iraqi soil against Turkey’s national security.”
