ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – President of the Kurdistan Region Nechirvan Barzani arrived in Istanbul on Friday in his first overseas visit since inauguration to bolster economic ties, confirmed Hurriyet newspaper.
Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said late on Thursday that he would receive Barzani on Friday, calling him “a special guest.”
He suggested focus would be economic relations, as Barzani is being accompanied by a group of businessmen.
“I will have a special guest tomorrow. Nechirvan [Barzani] has not come for a long time. After becoming president [of Kurdistan Region] he requested an appointment and we set tomorrow for the appointment. He will visit me. Later, I will give a speech to his businessmen,” said Erdogan during a panel interview broadcast across Turkish TV and social media networks in Istanbul late on Thursday.
This is Nechirvan Barzani’s first overseas visit since his inauguration as President of the Kurdistan Region on June 10, though he visited Baghdad on Thursday seeking to mend fractious Erbil-Baghdad relations.
His last visit to Turkey was in July 2018 when he attended Erdogan’s presidential inauguration.
Iraq-Turkey trade volume currently stands at around $10 billion. Turkish officials have repeatedly said they aspire to double trade volume.
Trade between the two countries predominantly makes its way through the Kurdistan Region’s Ibrahim Khalil border crossing.
Turkey and Kurdistan Region economic relations have flourished in a period of political detente between the two.
Turkey resumed flights to and from the Kurdistan Region in March 2018. They had been suspended in September 2017 when the Kurdistan Region went ahead with a referendum for Kurdish independence.
But while flights were suspended, Turkey kept its border crossings, including Ibrahim Khalil, open.
Turkey’s previous prime minister, Binali Yildirim, told journalists at an event in Istanbul on Thursday that Nechirvan Barzani was already a well-known and closely worked with figure in the Turkish political sphere.
Responding to a question by a Rudaw correspondent about his views on Nechirvan Barzani, Yildirim said “We know him very well in Turkey. When I was the prime minister [of Turkey from 2016 to 2018] I worked closely with him,” referring to the era when Barzani was the prime minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).
Yildirim is the ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) mayoral candidate for Istanbul re-do election on Sunday.
He lost Istanbul to the main opposition Republican People’s Party’s (CHP) candidate Ekrem Imamoglu on March 31.
However, following AKP allegations of vote-rigging, the result was rejected by the electoral body which ordered a re-vote.
His chances of victory have been threatened by the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) call on its supporters in Istanbul to vote for the CHP.
“Our trade relations with northern Iraq are good. As you know, there were issues for a while,” Yildirim added, referring to the 2017 independence referendum.
