11 October 2009, SundayDeliberately optimistic’ Turkey set for joint cabinet meeting with Iraq
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (sunglasses) inspects an honor guard with his Iraqi counterpart, Nouri al-Maliki, upon his arrival in Baghdad on July 10, 2008. The visit set the stage for multidimensional cooperation between Ankara and Baghdad.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is expected to head to Baghdad next week for the first meeting of a joint council between Iraq and Turkey, which is dubbed a “joint cabinet” meeting.
If it takes place as planned, Erdoğan's visit to the Iraqi capital will come only around 10 days after the Turkish Parliament passed a government motion on Oct. 6 extending by another year a mandate to launch cross-border military operations against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in northern Iraq.
Looking at the facts above, one may find either irony or optimism concerning the course of affairs in bilateral relations between Iraq and Turkey. Yet, when taking into consideration the tension in bilateral ties between the two neighbors due to the PKK presence in northern Iraq, as well as the considerable absence of international focus on the extension of the government motion in Turkey, one would probably lean toward optimism.
Additionally, one should also remember that a landmark visit to Ankara by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani on March 7-8, 2008, came only a week after the Turkish military withdrew troops from northern Iraq following an eight-day ground offensive against the PKK.
With Talabani's visit, bilateral relations between Iraq and Turkey entered a new phase. Before that, Talabani, elected president in 2005, had visited Ankara in September 2004 as then-president of the governing council of Iraq. Talabani, a Kurd, had long said he was interested in visiting Ankara, but Turkey's former president, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, had refused to invite him, despite strong economic and trade ties between the two countries, due to Turkish concerns that Iraqi Kurds were supporting the PKK.
Since 2007, Ankara has constantly underlined the significance of having regular contact with Baghdad in resolving problems stemming from the PKK presence, while portraying the PKK as an element poisoning relations between the people of Iraq and Turkey.
A mixed calendar
With a joint calendar marked by mutual visits between Iraq and Turkey as well as the Turkish government and the military's readiness to move to eliminate the PKK if need be, Ankara is confident that Baghdad has been convinced that Turkey has no secret agenda regarding Iraq.
During debates on the government motion, Davutoğlu, addressing Parliament, reiterated that the motion's sole target is the PKK, listed as a terrorist organization by the US, the European Union and Turkey.
“Harming our Iraqi siblings, the Iraqi central government, the regional administration [in northern Iraq] or Arabs, Kurds, Turkmen, Assyrians, Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq -- each of whom are our kinsmen -- is out of the question,” Davutoğlu said. He stressed that the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) was taking pains during its cross-border operations not to harm any Iraqi civilians or civilian settlements.
Touching upon Erdoğan's upcoming visit to Baghdad, the minister said Turkey would not make any moves that might destabilize Iraq at a time when it has been exerting efforts for full and comprehensive integration with Iraq as part of the High-Level Strategic Cooperation Council.
The formation of the council was outlined during a July 2008 visit to Baghdad by Erdoğan. The visit, marking a milestone in Iraq's efforts to end its regional isolation after US-led troops toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003, had also served as an occasion for sowing seeds of multidimensional bilateral cooperation between Ankara and Baghdad, as Erdoğan and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki signed a strategic partnership agreement that commits Turkey and Iraq to cooperation in the fields of politics, economy, energy, water, culture and security.
Through exercises to be run within the council, virtually as a single government, Turkey will help the Iraqi state system function more effectively and will thus help Iraqis to live in a more prosperous and stable country, Davutoğlu said.
He was confident that the Iraqi government would have no doubt about the good will of Turkey: “Our country has never held a secret agenda concerning either Iraq or any other country. Our sole target is eliminating terrorists who launch terrorist activities by escaping through northern Iraq.”
Resonance of the word ‘Mesopotamia’
Strongly worded remarks by Davutoğlu delivered during an August visit to Baghdad, the goal of which was to prepare for the first meeting of the High-Level Strategic Cooperation Council, brought to mind again whether too much optimism has developed in Ankara over the future of bilateral relations with Iraq as well as over the future of regional cooperation.
“We want the Mesopotamian region to once again become one of the most productive and prosperous regions in the world in all fields. We offer limitless cooperation for turning our region once more into the rising star of the world,” Davutoğlu said at the time.
Only days after those remarks, Davutoğlu said that if he were giving university lectures now and were asked to present a case study showing how a relationship moves from crisis to vision, he would cite Turkish-Iraqi relations, which have improved since the Dağlıca attack in October 2007, as an example.
In October 2007, the Dağlıca military outpost in southeastern Anatolia was attacked by the outlawed PKK, and 12 soldiers were killed, while eight other soldiers were captured and held for two weeks by the PKK before being released in a mountainous area in northern Iraq, eventually leading to a Turkish land operation in February 2008.
An explanation of the foreign minister's optimism was recently expressed by Davutoğlu himself, a professor of political science and international relations.
Speaking to Hürriyet daily columnist Nuray Mert following an official visit to Tehran in the first half of September, Davutoğlu said his policy understanding was based on a “deliberate optimism.”
“I'm an optimist. It is not possible to take action without being optimistic. I believe in what I do until the end; otherwise, I cannot persuade anybody,” he told Mert.
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October 11, 2009
Turkish Prime Minister to visit Baghdad next Thursday
Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on an official visit to Baghdad on Thursday at the invitation of his counterpart Nuri al-Maliki.
Erdogan said in a press statement on Saturday that the visit aimed to activate the Supreme Council for the strategic cooperation between the two countries and joint sub-committees emanating from the Council and against which signed dozens of agreements in various fields.
The members of the joint strategic cooperation between Turkey and Iraq had met in Ankara on September 18 in preparation for the second session of the Council to be held in Baghdad next Thursday.
