ANKARA, 9 March 2008 — Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said yesterday he wants better relations with Iraq, a week after Ankara ended an army offensive against PKK rebels based in the north of the country.
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani is on a visit to Turkey aimed at smoothing relations strained by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) issue and Turkey’s fears that Kurds based in northern Iraq seek their own state.
“I believe that we are capable of showing the necessary political will to open a new page in Turkish-Iraqi relations,” Erdogan said at a dinner in honor of Talabani, who was on his first visit to Turkey as head of state.
Talabani proposed the creation of a political institution to improve ties between neighboring countries, which could be at the prime minister or foreign minister level. Ankara has been highly critical of Baghdad’s failure to crack down on several thousand PKK guerrillas who use a remote, mountainous part of northern Iraq as a base to stage attacks on targets inside Turkey.
Talabani, a Kurd, said on Friday he had called on the government of Iraq’s Kurdish autonomous region to pressure the PKK to give up their weapons or leave the region.
Turkey blames the PKK for the deaths of nearly 40,000 people, mostly Kurds, since the group began its armed campaign for an ethnic homeland in southeast Turkey in 1984. Turkish warplanes and artillery have been bombing and shelling PKK positions periodically over several months, helped by intelligence provided by US forces in Iraq.
On Feb. 21, the military launched a large-scale ground incursion against the PKK, sending thousands of troops into the remote Zap Valley. Turkey’s General Staff says 240 rebels were killed in the campaign, along with 27 of its own men.
Iraq’s ministers of finance, oil, water resources, national security and industry were traveling with Talabani, who stressed on the importance of developing economic ties.
“We want to establish strategic relations in every area including oil, the economy, trade, culture and politics,” he told a meeting with Turkish business leaders.
Talabani also called on Turkish companies to invest in Iraq on the second day of his visit to Ankara.
Turkish Trade Minister Kursad Tuzmen said in a speech to the Iraqi delegation that bilateral trade between the two countries was targeted to reach $20 billion within two years, compared with more than $3.5 billion in 2007 and $940 million in 2003. “Our aim is to sign a free trade accord with Iraq within a short period of time,” he said.
State-run Anatolian news agency reported Iraqi Oil Minister Hussain Al-Shahristani as saying Turkey could establish an oil refinery in Iraq wherever it wanted.
