Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan will visit Iraq on Sunday for talks with officials on the fight against Kurdish militants, security issues and bilateral ties.
Ties between the neighbours have been rocky in recent years
due to Ankara’s cross-border military operations against
Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants based in northern Iraq’s
mountainous regions.
However, they have improved since Baghdad labelled the group
a “banned organisation” last year and the countries agreed to
hold high-level security talks.
The visit of the Turkish Foreign Minister comes amid repeated calls from Turkey for the Kurdish YPG militia in northeastern Syria to disband following the fall of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad last month, with Ankara warning of a new incursion unless its concerns are addressed.
The YPG spearheads the U.S.-allied Syrian Democratic Forces
(SDF).
Turkey deems them terrorists that are an extension of the
PKK, which the West also considers a terrorist organisation.
The source said Fidan would meet Iraqi President Abdul Latif
Rashid, Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein, and other Iraqi officials during the visit, adding he would repeat Ankara’s expectation for Iraq to label the PKK a terrorist organisation and remove it from its lands.
Fidan will emphasise the need for regional countries “to act
together against this terrorist organisation’s attempts to gain
legitimacy and ground,” the source said, with bilateral ties and
trade also be on the agenda.
On Thursday, Hussein said Turkey attacking Kurdish forces in
northern Syria would be dangerous and create more refugees.
Since Assad’s toppling by an administration friendly towards
Ankara, Syria’s Kurdish factions have been on the back foot, and
negotiators from the United States, Turkey, Damascus and the SDF have been zeroing in on a potential deal on the group’s fate.
Fidan’s visit also comes amid a domestic political effort to
end the decades-old conflict between Turkey and the PKK.
