Middle East
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan speaking to journalists in Istanbul on April 19, 2024. Photo: AA
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced on Friday that he will visit the Kurdistan Region during his one-day visit to Iraq next week.
“We will carry out this visit to Iraq. It will be a one-day visit. First to Baghdad. After meetings with the President and Prime Minister in Baghdad, we will visit Erbil,” Erdogan told journalists in Istanbul.
“In Erbil, we will have the opportunity to discuss not only the issues of northern Iraq [Kurdistan Region] but also the issues related to the central government,” he added.
The visit marks Erdogan’s first as the president of Turkey. His last visit to Iraq was in 2011 during his tenure as Ankara’s prime minister.
Kurdish oil exports, water issues, border security, and the Development Road, a multi-billion dollar road and rail project stretching from southern Iraqi shores to the border with Turkey in the north, are the main topics expected to be discussed during Erdogan’s visit.
"One of the most important agenda items of our visit is the water issue. They [Iraq] have made some requests regarding water, and we are working on these issues. We will make efforts to resolve this issue with them. They already want to resolve this matter. We will take steps in this direction," Erdogan told reporters in Ankara last week.
"There are also issues regarding natural gas and oil flow to Turkey, and we will try to address them," he added.
Oil exports from the Kurdistan Region through the Iraq-Turkey pipeline have been halted since March 2023 after a Paris-based arbitration court ruled in favor of Baghdad against Ankara, saying the latter had breached a 1973 pipeline agreement by allowing Erbil to begin independent oil exports in 2014.
Despite several talks between Kurdish, Iraqi, and Turkish officials, the exports have yet to resume and many international oil companies have suspended production.
Border security and the presence of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the mountainous areas of the Kurdistan Region are also expected to be discussed in the meetings.
A high-level Turkish delegation consisting of Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, Defense Minister Yasar Guler, and National Intelligence Organization (MIT) head Ibrahim Kalin visited Baghdad last month, holding the second round of a top security meeting with their Iraqi counterparts. The first round was held in Ankara in December.
A joint statement between the two countries, issued following the meeting, said they are working on making Erdogan’s trip “historic” and “successful” and that they hoped it would result in a “qualitative shift” in bilateral ties.
A day following the meeting, Iraq announced that it had designated the PKK as a “banned organization.”
A day after the ban, the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK), the umbrella organization that the PKK is part of, said in a statement that the greatest threat to Iraq was Turkey and accused Erdogan of wanting to invade and occupy areas of Iraq, including Mosul and Kirkuk, in an attempt to revive the Ottoman Empire.
Erdogan said last month that Ankara is close to completing a zone that will “permanently resolve” the security issues along their border with the Kurdistan Region and Iraq by the summer.
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