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Turkey and Iraq: The Making of aPartnershipHenri J. Barkey aa Bernard L. and Bertha F. Cohen Professor,Department of International Relations , LehighUniversity , Pennsylvania, USAPublished online: 12 Dec 2011.

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Turkey and Iraq: The Making of aPartnership

HENRI J. BARKEYBernard L. and Bertha F. Cohen Professor, Department of International Relations, Lehigh University,Pennsylvania, USA

ABSTRACT Turkish–Iraqi relations have undergone a dramatic turnaround since 2007. Thechange in Turkish Iraq policy was driven by both domestic factors, primarily Turkey’s Kurdishquestion and the ruling Justice and Development Party’s, (AKP, Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi),desire to become a global player and an influential force in its neighboring regions. Under-lying these ambitions is the burgeoning Turkish economy’s need to deepen commercial linkswith everyone and find new export markets. Post-Saddam Iraq offered new opportunities forthe AKP to seize. The Turkish government abandoned its policy of undermining the KurdistanRegional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq and instead opted to work closely with both thecentral government in Baghdad and the KRG. Iraq has become one of the more importantsuccess stories of the new Turkish foreign policy as Turkish economic ties with its southernneighbor have deepened and Turkish exports have mushroomed.

On March 28, 2011, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish Prime Minister, undertookhis second visit to Iraq. This visit served to underscore the dramatic turnabout Turkeyhad implemented in its relations with Iraq. Erdogan visited with all constituencies inthe Iraqi body politic. The trip was carefully choreographed to achieve a number ofsymbolic firsts. He was the first foreign leader to address the Iraqi parliament, the firstSunni leader to visit a Shi’a shrine and first Turkish prime minister to visit Erbil, thecapital of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).1 All these were designed tosend the message that Turkey remained committed to Iraqi unity and simultaneouslyto all of its different communities. This was a far cry from previous approaches thathad preferred at best to ignore it or perceive it as a source of instability.

The change in Turkish Iraq policy was driven by both domestic factors, primarilyTurkey’s Kurdish question and the ruling AKP desire to become a global player andan influential force in its neighboring regions. Underlying these ambitions is the bur-geoning Turkish economy’s need to deepen commercial links with everyone and findnew export markets. Post-Saddam Iraq offered new opportunities for the AKP toseize. First, it forged a close political and economic relationship with the KRG.

Correspondence Address: Henri J. Barkey, Department of International Relations, Lehigh University,Pennsylvania, USA. Email: hjb2@Lehigh.edu

Turkish StudiesVol. 12, No. 4, 663–674, December 2011

ISSN 1468-3849 Print/1743-9663 Online/11/040663–12 # 2011 Taylor & Francishttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14683849.2011.622508

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Second, it sought to play an active role in domestic Iraqi politics, especially followingthe American decision to pull out its troops from Iraq by the end of December 2011.Both of these would thrust Turkey into the wider region’s turbulent politics and makeit a player in Iraq’s future.

The turnabout with the KRG was especially dramatic. This was after all an entitythat the Turkish state had shunned and had tried to undermine from its very begin-nings for fear that Turkish Kurds would try to emulate their Iraqi counterparts’ auton-omy. These changes were not easy to make: there was a great deal of resistance withinTurkey, especially from Kemalist state elites, be they in the military or civilian sector.

Today the Turks dominate the Kurdish economy in northern Iraq. The KRG ismore than a simple market for Turkey. It is also a potential source of gas as significantdiscoveries have proved to be a boon for the Turks who are trying to become anenergy corridor to Europe. Most importantly, the KRG is also emerging—despiteall the possible future complications that may arise with the indeterminate status ofthe city and province of Kirkuk—as a Turkish political ally in the still inchoateIraqi politics. Turkey’s improved relations with the KRG and its more visible androbust foreign policy has also served to show the Tehran regime that it has compe-tition in Baghdad.

The future is not completely rosy however. The severe strains experienced bymany countries in the region when it comes to water shortages is a potentialsource of discord as the two main rivers, the Euphrates and the Tigris, originate inTurkey and then flow through Syria to Iraq. As Turkey steps up its own exploitationof the waters of these two rivers conditions are likely to further deteriorate down-stream. Beyond the water problems, much of the improvement in relations with theKRG is contingent on Ankara’s ability to address its own domestic Kurdishproblem, which has assumed a greater sense of urgency as Turkish Kurds organizeand mobilize to push for their rights.

Antecedents

Following the collapse of the Baghdad Pact in 1958 with the overthrow of the Nuri al-Said regime in Iraq, Turkey and Iraq went on their own separate ways. The BaghdadPact, which had joined them, had split the Arab world into two camps.2 From then onTurkey returned to a policy of benign neglect when it came to the Middle East, as itgrew more interested in its own domestic problems, political and economic, andpursued a deepening of its relations with the West. It had already joined NATOand after 1963 it showed increasing interest in becoming part of a burgeoning Euro-pean effort at economic integration.

Beyond Cold War concerns, Turkey’s interest in Iraq was limited to the potentialthreat of a Kurdish ethnic awakening, not just in Iraq and Turkey, but also in Syriaand Iran. While Iraq had the most politically mobilized Kurdish population, whichhad taken arms up against the regime, Ankara’s rulers too had a memory of succes-sive Kurdish rebellions since the beginning of the republic in 1923. These rebellionshad brutally been put down and the potential for more remained a major source of

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concern. In fact, the officers who executed the 1960 coup had envisaged initiating amajor forced resettlement program of Kurds away from the southeast. The other pre-occupation with Iraq had to do with the delimitation of the border after World WarI. Turks had always believed that the British had wrongfully (and in a deceitfulway) imposed a border solution that imparted the province of Mosul to Iraq.3

Wars forced Iraq to once again enter Turkish consciousness. The first of these wasthe 1980–88 Iran-Iraq war. That war had two sets of different consequences forTurkey. On the one hand, the war made both combatants very dependent onTurkey for manufactured imports and the transit of imports from the rest of theworld. Turkish exports increased dramatically coming at an especially opportunetime for Turkey, which had been reeling from a devastating economic crisis thathad contributed to the overthrow of the civilian regime in 1980. The completion ofthe Kirkuk-Yumurtalık oil pipeline during the early years of the war also boatedTurkish–Iraqi trade. The second, though much more problematic, effect on Turkeyof the war was the rekindling of the Kurdish rebellion in Iraq, albeit with Iranianencouragement. By 1987 when Saddam Hussein’s regime regained the upper hand,Iraqi forces committed mass atrocities against the Kurdish civilian population,included the Anfal campaign and the infamous gassing of the town of Halabja.The repression led to the first of the Kurdish refugee flows, though minor by latercomparisons, into Turkey. This coincided with a renewed Turkish Kurdish rebellionunder the leadership of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, the PKK, led by AbdullahOcalan, who had been given refuge by Hafez al-Assad’s regime in Syria.

The first Gulf War of 1991 that followed Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait crystallizedfor Turkey the “threat” it faced from northern Iraq. Kurds taking advantage of a wea-kened Ba’athi regime rebelled once again and again with devastating consequencesfor them. Some 500,000 Kurds sought refuge in Turkey (and another million inIran). Turkish authorities unwilling to take in the refugees had to agree to the creationof a no-fly zone in northern Iraq which forced Iraqi military units to withdraw tobelow the 36th parallel. The refugees returned to their homes protected by a multina-tional force operating from the Turkish NATO base in Incirlik. This was a paradox-ical outcome for the Turkish establishment: it had to acquiesce to the protection of aburgeoning Kurdish entity in northern Iraq while its first preference was for thecentral government in Baghdad to reclaim control of all of its territory. By then,the PKK-led Kurdish insurrection in Turkey had assumed alarming dimensions.PKK fighters roamed many parts of the Kurdish populated east and southeast atwill and challenged the Turkish army’s control over its own territory. The creationof a de facto autonomous zone in northern Iraq, with a weak government and moun-tainous topography, enabled the PKK to use Iraqi Kurdistan as a rear base ofoperations.

The first Gulf War also gave rise to serious fissures within Turkey’s political lea-dership. Then- President Turgut Ozal had wanted to participate in the allied oper-ations against Saddam, but was prevented from doing so by his own military andparliament. He would also take a different approach to Iraqi Kurdish leadershipunder Messrs. Jalal Talabani and Masoud Barzani by courting them with the principal

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purpose of influencing Turkish Kurds. He was partially successful: Talabani pre-vailed on Ocalan in 1993 to declare a ceasefire. Ozal’s initiative collapsed followinghis death and the fighting started up once again. Nevertheless, Erdogan and the AKPgovernment would later pick up his approach.4

Until then, however, Turkey’s approach reverted back to the old status quo think-ing of trying to deny Iraqi Kurds any recognition and help. This was a containmentpolicy of sorts. One Turkish foreign minister even tried to prevent humanitarianNGOs from crossing into northern Iraq. Turkey’s Iraq policy in effect became anorthern Iraq policy where the Turkish military operated in pursuit of PKK rebels,sometimes in coordination with Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga units, and sometimes uni-laterally. Starting in the mid-1990s, Ankara showed a great deal of concern regardingthe fate of the Turkmen minority in northern Iraq, something it had failed to do duringSaddam’s rule over the north. The Iraqi Turkmen Front (ITC) founded in 1995became a wholly owned subsidiary of the Turkish government, if not its military,and a primary instrument for influencing the political landscape in northern Iraq.Turkey’s Iraq policy became an important source of tension with Washingtondespite US support for Turkish cross-border operations against the PKK. Ankarafailed to appreciate on the other hand how critical Iraqi Kurds were to the Americaneffort at containing Saddam.

In 1998, Ankara managed to threaten Syria to stop sheltering Ocalan. This led tohis ultimate capture and imprisonment and to the PKK declaring a unilateral ceasefireand withdrawing to northern Iraq. Despite hopes that Ocalan’s imprisonment wouldlead to domestic reforms, little happened, and eventually in 2004 the PKK resumed itsmilitary operations.

However, another war, the 2003 American-led invasion of Iraq and the overthrowof Saddam imposed new realities on the political landscape for Ankara. The AKPgovernment that had just assumed power on the eve of American military operationswas unsuccessful in convincing either the military or its own parliament, just as Ozalhad failed, to support the opening of a second front against Baghdad. Parliament’sMarch 1, 2003 vote to refuse the American 4th Infantry Division to traverseTurkey on route to northern Iraq made Iraqi Kurds a more pivotal actor in the post-war developments. The new Iraq emerged, much to the consternation of Ankara,as a federal state composed of two entities an Arab and a Kurdish. In effect, IraqiKurds had succeeded in obtaining de jure recognition of their status in Iraq.

The success of the Islam-influenced AKP at the 2002 polls enabling it to form agovernment without coalition partners had unnerved the Kemalist establishment.As AKP’s actions were scrutinized, its policies towards northern Iraq became alitmus test of its nationalist bona fides. The military and the secular establishmentdid not give the government much space in developing its policies. In fact, thearch-Kemalist president Ahmet Necdet Sezer used every occasion to prevent anopening to Iraqi Kurds, vetoing for instance even invitations to Talabani who hadassumed the presidency of Iraq simply because he was a Kurd. In 2007, the Chiefof the General Staff, Yasar Buyukanıt, personally and publicly intervened toprevent the then Foreign Minister Gul from meeting the KRG Prime Minister

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Nechirvan Barzani.5 The turnabout came after the 2007 Turkish elections whichproved to be a complete repudiation of the military that had blocked the ascendancyof Abdullah Gul, an AKP stalwart and foreign minister, to the presidency.

AKP in Charge

The AKP did not fully put its imprint on Turkish foreign policy until 2007. Until then,its preoccupation concentrated on two distinct issues: the European Union (EU)accession process and the consequences of the Iraq war. Both of these had seriousreverberations in domestic politics. Progress along the EU accession process wasboth necessary for the AKP to win a degree of independence from Turkey’s “meddle-some” generals and also to prove to suspicious domestic constituents and foreignobservers that the AKP was not a party intent on reversing the secular reforms ofthe Republican period. On both fronts, this proved to be successful: efforts at resol-ving the Cyprus crisis and speeding up the pace of domestic reforms had the intendedeffect of gaining respectability in the West. The AKP’s policy-makers, however, alsohad ambitions that transcended the traditional contours of Turkish foreign policy.Erdogan, Gul and Ahmet Davutoglu, the current foreign minister, saw Turkey as apotential global power able to exercise influence in all adjoining regions andbeyond. Turkey had natural advantages to achieve this goal: its strategic location,the NATO alliance, EU candidacy, cultural and historical ties to the Middle Eastand the Caucasus and, most importantly, a booming export-based economy.

One cannot underestimate the importance the AKP attaches to economic and com-mercial considerations.6 The Turkish economy not only needs export markets tosustain its growth, but also the expansion of foreign trade has given rise to a newclass of pious and conservative Anatolia-based entrepreneurs who form the AKP’spolitical support base. The AKP enunciated a new policy of “zero problems withthe neighbors.” The aim was to reduce tensions and seek greater economic (andeven political) integration with neighboring countries. Great efforts were expendedin this vein to have joint cabinet meetings, with emphasis on signing as manyaccords, ranging from economic to infrastructural to cultural issues. Visa require-ments were eliminated in order to facilitate the flow of people.

The AKP, in effect, as Meliha Benli Altunisik has argued, developed an alternativeapproach of the Middle East. Going back to the Ozal years, when the Middle East wasperceived as an area ripe for expanding economic and cultural relations, the AKPlooked to further develop these links in a more institutionalized form.7 The differencebetween the Ozal years and the AKP stemmed from the fact that the Turkish economyhaving matured after the economic reforms instituted by Ozal in the 1980s andthrough the numerous crises of the 1990s and early 2000s, had become an economicpowerhouse of its own with a business elite not dependent on the state for special pri-vileges, permits and help.

What is more, the leadership vacuum created by the prolonged and inconclusiveAmerican war in Iraq provided Turkey with new opportunities in the region. Themediation attempt between Israel and Syria was the most visible of the efforts

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designed to highlight its soft power and ascending influence. In Iraq, the AKP gov-ernment used its influence to help convince Iraqi Sunnis not to boycott the 2005 elec-tions. The advent of the Obama administration and its determination to extricate theUSA from Iraq provided Ankara with another impetus to involve itself in Iraq if forno other reason, but to influence events on the ground in its favor. Iraq, therefore,emerged as one of the most important areas of focus for the Turks.8

Having already established links with Sunnis, the Shi’a and the Turkmen what wasmissing were the Kurds. The Turkish government began to pivot away from a policyof complete support for the ITC and confrontation with the Kurds towards greatercooperation with the latter. The ITC also had proved to be more of a nuisance thanan asset. In 2003, its members with Turkish Special Forces elements were caughtby the Americans in northern Iraq preparing an assassination attempt on a high-ranking Kirkuk official. The arrest of the Turkish soldiers led to one of the moreserious crises in Turkish–American relations.

Iraqi Kurdish leaders had been urging Ankara to improve relations and to this endhad been encouraging the Turkish private sector to invest and locate to the KRG as abase for operations for the rest of Iraq.9 For Iraqi Kurds, Turkey offered the best ofboth worlds, a powerful economy with ambitions to join the EU, but also a directconduit to Western markets.

The poor showing of the ITC in Iraqi national elections—the realization that thisorganization had scant support among Turkmen in Iraq—enabled Ankara to de-emphasize the importance of the Turkmen issue in determining Iraq policy. Neverthe-less, Turkish concerns regarding the uncertainty regarding Article 140 of the IraqiConstitution, which calls for a referendum over the future status of oil-rich Kirkukand its possible incorporation into the KRG, have not dissipated. Turks continue tofear that Kirkuk with its oil riches would provide the KRG the wherewithal to seekindependence from Iraq and unleash a potential irredentist wave throughout the ter-ritory of historical Kurdistan.

The opening to the KRG was not without its critics and opposition. The military inparticular resisted, mainly because of the potential impact on Turkish Kurds.10 Inaddition, of course, was the PKK presence in the remote Qandil Mountains and theperceived unwillingness of the two dominant Kurdish parties to dislodge that organ-ization. Still, the AKP labored behind the scenes aided by the Turkish National Intel-ligence Chief Emre Taner and Ministry of Foreign Affairs personnel to convince themilitary to take a chance with the KRG. The effort culminated with the opening of theTurkish consulate in Erbil, the KRG capital, in what would have been an unfathom-able development only a few years earlier.11

Critical to the KRG opening was the domestic angle. In a return to the Ozalapproach of the early 1990s, the AKP government sought the help of the KRG leader-ship to convince the PKK and the Kurds to abandon the “armed struggle.” The IraqiKurds, interested in maintaining their relations with Ankara and also because of theirdesire to see the PKK leave its hideouts in their territory, readily complied. AsTurkish Kurdish leaders came calling on them in Erbil or Baghdad, Iraqi Kurds for-cefully argued for Turkish Kurds to seek non-violent means to pursue their struggle.

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Iraqi Kurds played an important role in facilitating the AKP’s 2009 short-lived“Kurdish opening.”12 Also, Turkish Kurds have been mindful not to undermineAnkara–Erbil relations so as not to jeopardize the KRG’s well-being. Ironically, attimes Iraqi Kurdish leaders have chided their Turkish Kurdish counterparts forgoing too far in their demands.13

Improved relations with the KRG aided Ankara’s clout in Baghdad. Turkey dis-covered early on that despite the Arab-Kurdish differences, it would be very difficultto play one against the other in Iraq. The proof came quickly after the American inva-sion when Turkey agreed with Washington to send troops to Iraq as part of a peace-keeping mission of sorts. To the surprise of Ankara, Iraqi Arabs were as firmlyopposed to the mission as were the Kurdish leaders. The KRG may have been afederal entity, but it was still part and parcel of Iraq and, therefore, Turkey’s relationswith Baghdad now went through Erbil.

Turkey’s political activism in Iraq took two different forms: international and dom-estic. Following devastating bomb attacks in August 2009 in downtown Baghdad thatIraqis blamed on Damascus, Turks tried to mediate between Syria and Iraq by invit-ing their respective intelligence chiefs to Ankara.14 Ankara also came to completelyshare, as Davutoglu would admit, Washington’s vision for Iraq’s future.15 Bothcountries wanted Iraq to achieve stability, avoid both Sunni-Shi’a as well as Arab-Kurdish divisions and conflict. This has led to a great deal of cooperation betweenthe two countries on Iraq; a remarkable change, given that throughout the 1990sand early 2000s, Washington grew increasingly frustrated with Ankara’s hardlinestand, especially as regards to northern Iraq. In 2008, the AKP government wasinstrumental in persuading the Iraqis to sign the Status of Forces Agreement, the fra-mework agreement for the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. This agreementwas signed despite significant Iranian counter pressure: in this case as in others, theTurks effectively helped limit or at least serve as a counterweight to Iranian influencein Iraq.

Still Ankara did encounter its own setbacks in Iraq. Turkey and the USA in 2010also worked together in the formation of the Iraqi government. However, in this par-ticular case their attempts to empower the Sunni parties under the leadership of Shi’aleader Iyad Allawi and to prevent the current Prime Minister Maliki from remainingin office proved unsuccessful. Until the advent of the Arab Spring in 2011, Syria andIraq were two of the most important showcases for the success of Turkey’s “no pro-blems with neighbors policy.” While Syria’s convulsions and the Bashar Asad’sregime unwillingness to respond to Turkish entreaties regarding reforms dramaticallyunderscored the limits of this policy, Iraq, by contrast, remains overall an importantsuccess story for Turkish diplomacy.

Up with Economics and Down with Water

As the chart below demonstrates, Turkish Iraqi trade took off after 2003. Since then,Turkish exports increased more than sixfold. Twenty-four percent of Iraqi importscome from Turkey and only 2.6 percent of its own exports end up in Turkey.16

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After the EU’s 27 members taken as an aggregate, Iraq was the most important exportoutlet for Turkey with 5.25 percent of all its exports in 2010. The importance of Iraqto Turkish Middle East trade is even more striking: Iraq is the destination of 26percent Turkish exports to the Middle East, excluding Libya, Tunisia, Algeria andMorocco. When these countries are also included, the share is 22 percent. Almostall Turkish imports consist of petroleum-based products, whereas Iraqis (includingthe KRG) buy a great variety of industrial products, ranging from steel to electricalengines and consumer durables. In addition, many Turkish companies also work inthe service sector engaging in construction and financial services. A number ofTurkish banks have opened subsidiaries in the KRG and Turkish Airlines has inau-gurated direct flights to Erbil.

For energy-poor Turkey seeking to become an energy corridor to Europe, Iraq’svast oil and gas reserves are very attractive. In the 1980s, two pipelines carryingcrude from the Kirkuk oil fields to the Turkish Mediterranean coast had been built.The KRG’s reserves have yet to be fully discovered; years of deliberate negligenceon the part of the Ba’ath regime followed by the UN sanctions regime and disputesbetween Baghdad and Erbil concerning jurisdiction over the exploration and owner-ship of hydrocarbon resources delayed full exploitation.

Turkey, however, has not wasted any time. “Turkey has been a direct investor ofmajor Iraqi oil and gas contracts since late 2008, the Turkish state-owned TPAOcompany participating in consortia that have won technical service contracts todevelop” a series of oil and gas fields.17

The discovery of enormous gas fields in the KRG territory by the British HeritageOil Company in 201118 has also helped significantly alter the picture for Ankara.Turkey had joined a gas pipeline consortium intent on building what in the tradecame to be known as the Nabucco pipeline which would carry gas from theCaspian regionand possibly from Central Asia has been dogged by a series of pro-blems, including disputes between Turkey and Azerbaijan, stiff Russian competitionand worries of lack of sufficient gas to fill the pipeline.19 In June 2011, six countriesfinally signed an agreement of intent and the Turks made it clear that they aim to feedboth KRG and Iraqi gas into the pipeline.20 Paradoxically, the Turks who used tosupport Baghdad against the KRG when it came to hydrocarbon law negotiationshave become frustrated with Baghdad’s slow pace in the negotiations which havestarted to impinge on Turkish commercial interests (Figure 1).

Future economic and commercial prospects are likely to tighten the bonds betweenTurkey and Iraq and the KRG. In so doing, Turkey will be contributing to both Iraq’sstability and prosperity while providing it with a powerful voice in Iraq itself. There isanother benefit to both Iraqis and the Kurds, not to mention the USA, and that is oneof containing and balancing Iran. Tehran has invested a great deal in its relations withboth Shi’a and Kurds. Much of the Shi’a leadership spent time in Iran during theiryears in exile and has continued to derive critical support from Tehran. Hence,Iran’s influence is deep and widely based except, of course, with the Sunnis whotend to see Iraqi Shi’a as a tool of the Iranians. Iran’s trade with Iraq, specificallyits exports, have risen dramatically, from $1.5 billion in 2006 to an expected estimate

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$8 billion in 2010, surpassing Turkish figures.21 Iran also expects to export gas andoil to Iraq to help its electricity generation shortages.

Water, on the other hand, remains one of the critical challenges to the Iraqi–Turkishrelationship. Turkey’s immense 22-dam Southeastern Anatolian Project, GAP, startedin 1980 is having an impact in the downstream countries of Syrian and Iraq. Theproblem is not new, but has gained a new sense of urgency as Iraq tries to recoverfrom years of war and sanctions and other factors, including climate change anddroughts that have caused serious dislocation in the agricultural sector. The lack ofwater has “ravaged fresh-water fisheries, livestock, crops and groves of date palmsthat once made the area famous, forcing the migration of tens of thousands offarmers.”22 In the Kurdish areas, some 100,000 villagers have abandoned theirvillages to seek new places to live as traditional water systems disappeared.23

The problem is not solely attributable to Turkey or the external factors, as insuffi-cient attention to infrastructure and decades of mismanagement resulting in a

Figure 1. Turkish–Iraqi Trade.Source: Turkiye Istatistik Kurumu, Iraq Turkey Business Directory http://www.iraqturkey.com/ihracedilenurunler.htm; DEIK, Dis Ekonomik Iliskileri Konseyi, http://www.deik.org.tr/Lists/Bulten/Attachments/130/Irak%20Ulke%20Bulteni,%20Nisan%202010_TR.pdf

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significant percentage of Iraq’s available water being wasted. The Iranians too havebeen constructing dams, such as over the Karun River, further reducing water flowsinto Iraq. The predicament faced by Iraq is likely to get even worse as the GAPproject has yet to be completed with more dams envisioned over rivers that flowinto northern Iraq.

Not surprisingly, Iraqis have increasingly become more vocal in their criticisms ofTurkey. Already faced with drought conditions they had begun as early as in 2008 toask Ankara to release more water downstream. More recently, Iraqi government offi-cials have threatened that the Iraqi “Parliament would not approve a strategiccooperation council with Turkey until Turkey agrees to sign an agreement withIraq about water.”24 In reality, the water issue is mired in zero-sum perceptionsand misperceptions, domestic politics and a contested international legal environ-ment.25 “Time [has been] on Turkey’s side as the upstream riparian was in nohurry to conclude a basin-wide agreement before the completion of GAP.”26 Asthe pressure arising from population and economic growth increase, so will tensionsbetween all the three countries involved, Syria, Turkey and Iraq.

Finally, two issues could still mar Turkish–KRG relations. The first is the future ofKirkuk even if Turkish officials are less vocal about it. Iraqi Kurds remain determined toincorporate Kirkuk, if not the whole at least parts of the province into KRG territory.Were this to happen and depending on how it is achieved, there remains a dangerthat relations could be strained. More important, is the future of the Turkish Kurdishproblem. In the absence of a successful process of accommodation in Turkey with itsown Kurdish minority the pressures of ethnic solidarity across the border, though tem-pered by the commercial linkages, could undo much of the progress achieved so far.

Conclusion

The 2011 Arab Spring took Turkey, just as it did everyone else for that matter, bysurprise and upended much of its calculations and strategy. Its efforts at buildingstrong relationships to encourage diplomatic and especially commercial relationsthat would enhance its own prestige and economic benefits have been set back. Ithesitated in Libya where it had sizable investments and workers causing a backlashamong that segment of the population rebelling against the Gaddafi regime. In Syriatoo, which had become exhibit 1 of Turkey’s attempts at reversing relations of enmityin favor of closer integration, the Turks faced a debacle, primarily because theirrelationship had been based solely with Bashar Assad. In Libya and Syria, wherestrongmen dominated the state and society, Turkey had little choice but to buildthose linkages to the rulers.

Iraq, by contrast, which also has been influenced by the tumult of the Arab Springbut where the system, as dysfunctional as it may appear, is nonetheless not centralizedand has many more actors and outlets for participation. Hence, in Iraq, Turkey doesnot run the risk of being associated with one set of personalities or one family. Iraq,therefore, is more of a challenge for Turkey yet, at the same time, a far more accuratetest of its ability to effect a change in its foreign policy.

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In Iraq, Turkey has to contend with a myriad of domestic actors, each with acomplex set of interests, but also competition from Iran and has to manage itsally the USA. So far, Turkey has done remarkably well in balancing all of thesecontending actors. This success in addition to Iraq’s importance to the Turkisheconomy as a market for its exports has transformed Iraq into the single most impor-tant country for Turkey in the Middle East. Therefore, it behooves Turkish, Iraqiand KRG officials to pay special attention to the management of their bilateralties and not risk sowing the seeds of future discord. This is especially true whenit comes to the issue of water.

Notes

1. Bilgay Duman, “Basbakan Erdogan’ın Irak Ziyareti’nin Ardından,” ORSAM (Ortadogu StratejikArastirmalar Merkezi), April 1, 2011. http://www.orsam.org.tr/tr/yazigoster.aspx?ID=1690.

2. Phebe Marr, The Modern History of Iraq (Boulder: Westview Press, 2nd ed., 2004), p. 75.3. Iraqis, by contrast, were always cognizant of possible Turkish territorial ambitions in northern Iraq, see

Charles Tripp, A History of Iraq (New York: Cambridge University Press, 3rd ed., 2007), pp. 115–6.4. For a more comprehensive analysis of this period, please see Henri J. Barkey, Turkey and Iraq the

Perils (and Prospects) of Proximity (US Institute of Peace Special Report No. 141, 2005) andTurkey’s New Engagement in Iraq Embracing Iraqi Kurdistan (US Institute of Peace SpecialReport No. 237, 2010).

5. Yasemin Çongar, “Kusatılmıslık ve ‘dinamik gucler,” Milliyet, February 19, 2007.6. Kemal Kirisci, “The Transformation of Turkish Foreign Policy: The Rise of the Trading State,” New

Perspectives on Turkey, No. 40 (Spring 2009), pp. 29–57.7. Meliha Benli Altunisik, “Worldviews and Turkish Foreign Policy in the Middle East,” New Perspec-

tives on Turkey, No. 40 (Spring 2009), pp. 188–9.8. Davutoglu in an interview reiterated the centrality of Iraq in Turkish foreign policy, Amberin Zaman,

“Ahmet Davutoglu,” Haberturk, July 24, 2009.9. By 2007, there were some 1200 Turkish companies operating in the KRG, primarily in construction,

generating some $2 billion in business, Serpil Yilmaz, “Turks are Reconstructing Northern Iraq,”Turkish Daily News, April 12–19, 2007.

10. On the other hand, controversies and lack of transparency regarding the military’s lack of preparednessin the face of PKK attacks, especially an October 2008 cross border operation that led to the deaths of13 soldiers, helped undermine the military’s stranglehold on KRG policy, Burhan Ekinci, “Her seyDaglıca’yla Basladı,” Taraf, February 11, 2009.

11. Murat Yetkin, “Irak Kurtleriyle Yeni bir Sayfa,” Radikal, October 31, 2009. Even though Davutoglustrenuously denied that the opening of the consulate amounted to a recognition of the KRG, in reality,this clearly was the case.

12. This was reminiscent of Talabani’s 1993 efforts at convincing the PKK to announce a unilateralceasefire.

13. Iraqi President and Kurdish leader Talabani, for instance, complained that it was far too early for theKurdish municipalities demand for the use of both Turkish and Kurdish. The Turkish Kurdish leaderSelahattin Demirtas was quick to respond by suggesting that Talabani stay out of their internal issues,Radikal, December 25, 2010.

14. Murat Yetkin, “Turkiye, Irak, Suriye istihbaratı Ankara’da toplandı,” Radikal, September 16, 2009.15. Zaman, “Ahmet Davutoglu,” Haberturk, July 24, 2009.16. Turkish Foreign Trade Ministry, http://www.dtm.gov.tr/dtmadmin/upload/ANL/OrtaDoguDb/Irak.

pdf.17. Sean Kaye, The Coming Turkish–Iranian Competition in Iraq (US Institute of Peace Special Report

No. 276, 2011), p. 12.

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18. For details see, Alyob Mawlood, “Iraq’s Largest Gas Field Discovered in Kurdistan,” KurdistanGlobe, January 30, 2011.

19. Katinka Barysch, Should the Nabucco Pipeline be Shelved? (London: Center for European Reform,May 2010).

20. Taha Akyol, “Nabucco’ya 6 imza,” Milliyet, June 10, 2011.21. Ariel Farrar-Welmann and Robert Frasco, “Iraq–Iran Foreign Relations,” Iran Tracker, July 29, 2010,

http://www.irantracker.org/foreign-relations/iraq-iran-foreign-relations and http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/04/25/us-iraq-iran-trade-interview-idUSTRE63O11U20100425.

22. Steven Lee Myers, “Vital River is Withering, and Iraq has no Answer,” The New York Times, June 12,2010.

23. UNESCO has called these the first climate change refugees. “Crise dans le nord de L’Irak,” Diplomatie42 (Janvier-Fevrier, 2010).

24. Statement by Iraqi government spokesman, Ali Dabbagh, “Baghdad Slams Turkey’s Water Policy,”Hurriyet Daily News, May 25, 2011.

25. A 1997 UN Convention on the Law of the Non-navigational Uses of International Water-courses,which Turkey has refused to sign, has yet to receive the requisite number of signatures to be ratified.

26. Marwa Daoudy, “Asymmetric Power: Negotiating Water in the Euphrates and Tigris,” InternationalNegotiation, Vol. 14 (2009), p. 383.

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