Kurdish Prime Minister to Visit Turkey as Baghdad Mends Ties
Posted: Tue Oct 29, 2013 4:08 pm
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Kurdistan Region Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani arrives in Turkey on Thursday, visiting Erbil’s top trade partner just days after Baghdad and Ankara took their first step in mending strained ties.
A government official in Erbil told Rudaw that Barzani will be meeting in Ankara with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and other top government officials. His visit coincides with the completion of a major pipeline project that connects landlocked Kurdistan’s oil and gas to markets in Turkey and beyond.
For the first time in more than two years, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari visited Ankara last week and met with his Turkish counterpart Ahmet Davutoglu.
"Our relations had deteriorated in the past two years but it is now time to turn a new page," Zebari told reporters in Ankara on Thursday. "There are still some issues, but there is no problem that can't be solved.”
The war in Syria and fear it might spill across borders appears to be driving Baghdad and Ankara to mend ties, although they remain on opposite ends in the conflict.
Ties between Erbil and Turkey are firmly established. Turkey is Kurdistan’s biggest commercial partner with more than $10 billion of trade reported in 2012.
The United States has expressed concern in the past about some of the energy deals between Erbil and Ankara, particularly the oil pipeline, fearing it will deepen tensions between the autonomous region and Baghdad.
However, in a panel discussion at New York’s Columbia University last week, former Turkish Consul to Erbil Aydin Selcen said, “The US is happy about Kurdish oil being exported through Turkey.”
“The only country Turkey has no issues with is the Kurdistan Region,” Selcen said.
The Ankara-based International Middle East Peace Research Center (IMPR) said in a recent report that the success of Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) in last month’s parliamentary elections in Kurdistan mean closer ties between Erbil and Turkey.
Comments
7 17 PS | 28/10/2013
PKK is controled by Turkey through Öcalan. The Pesmerges directly declared autonomy in Basur after they freed it in 1991. But PYD promised to Turkey not to declare autonomy in Rojava because Öcalan commanded it to them, instead of that they attack other Kurdish parties and leaders and try to destroy the unity in Kurdistan.
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4 1 FAUthman | yesterday at 05:58
This is all good news and if "The U.S. is happy about Kurdish oil being exported through Turkey", the Kurdish pipeline completed, and Baghdad scrambling not to be left out, then the picture is complete. More pipelines for oil and gas are coming from Kurdistan, 1 million bpd of oil by 2015. Keep an eye on Nineva (Mosul) following the KRG with plans to export its own oil independently of Baghdad.
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16 5 Kurd | 23 hours ago
How is it justifiable that Nechirvan Barzani doesn't allow a Kurdish leader from Syria to visit Erbil,while he is travelling to Turkey? Lost for words.