Category: Iraq

Turkey and Iran Vie for Control of Iraq

By WLADIMIR van WILGENBURG

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Turkish Prime Minister Receb Tayyib Erdogan. Photo AFP.

ERBIL, Iraqi Kurdistan — A recent report by the United States Institute of Peace suggests that Washington should be less concerned about increased cooperation between Turkey and Iran because the two countries have different visions for the Middle East, suggesting that the “renewal of the historical Ottoman-Persian rivalry in Mesopotamia is likely as the dominant American presence fades.”

The US is scheduled to withdraw all of its forces in Iraq in December 2011. Some observers believe that this will open the door for neighboring countries to influence Iraqi politics.

“[Iran and Turkey are] rapidly becoming the most influential external actors inside the country as the U.S. troop withdrawal proceeds,” United States Institute of Peace (USIP) Iraq program officer Sean Kane wrote in his report “The Coming Turkish-Iranian Competition in Iraq.”

“From the sixteenth century until the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, Iraqi history was largely determined by the ebb and flow of conflict between Ottoman Turks and the Safavid Persians,” Kane wrote.

The US withdrawal could result in the resumption of the competition between Iran and Turkey, the heirs of the Ottoman and Persian empires.

Iraqi Kurdish officials share this view and are anxious about the historical rivalry between Iran and Turkey. In 2010, Iraq’s Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, a Kurd, identified Iran and Turkey as “the biggest players and rivals in Iraq”.

“When in August 2010, Iran opened a trade center in the Kurdish city of Sulaimani, its first such outpost, Iran’s deputy minister of commerce, complained that Turkey, which he described as ‘Iran’s rival in that country,’ had already opened twelve such centers,” Kane wrote.

Furthermore, Iran has been concerned with the high-profile visit of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to Erbil in April. Erbil’s Governor Nawzad Hadi told Rudaw that Iran was not very happy when the Turkish prime minister visited Kurdistan.

“Turkey and Iran compete in Kurdistan,” he said.

Joost Hiltermann, Middle East and North Africa Deputy Program Director for the International Crisis Group told Reuters that opening the Turkish consulate in Basra in October 2009 was meant to curb Iranian influence in Iraq through investments and trade.

Kane suggests that Turkey should use its “successful” outreach such as Erdogan’s visit and Turkey’s economic relations with the Kurdistan region to improve its relations with Shiite parties in Iraq.

“A similar strategic outreach to Shiite parties based on economic integration and Ankara’s and Baghdad’s common interest in a stable and strong Iraq could have similar mutual benefits,” Kane wrote.

While Turkey supported the secular Iraqiya list, an alliance of Arab nationalists and Turkmen in the March 2010 Iraqi elections, Iran supported a Shiite-dominated coalition to prevent Sunnis from taking power.

“Iran and Turkey therefore tend to work at cross purposes in Iraqi politics, as seen in the protracted power struggle surrounding Iraq’s 2010 election cycle,” Kane wrote.

The US is concerned about the continuing Iranian influence in Iraq. On June 15, American soldiers were killed by suspected Iran-backed groups in Iraq, which marked the highest casualties for the American troops in two years.

Major General Jeffrey Buchanan, chief spokesman for the US military in Iraq, told the Washington Post that the biggest threat to US troops comes from some Iran-backed Shiite groups in Iraq.

And as the deadline for the US troop withdrawal approaches, Iran is increasingly pushing the Iraqi authorities not to extend the presence of US forces.

“It is now pushing strongly, most notably through the Sadrist (Movement) and its leader Muqtada al Sadr… to prevent any request by the Iraqi government for a continued U.S. troop presence after 2011,” Kane wrote.

Kane concluded that the Turkish “blend of Islam, democracy, and soft power is a far more attractive regional template than the Iranian narrative of Islamic theocracy and hard power resistance.”

“The United States should therefore continue to welcome increased Turkish-Iraqi economic, trade, and energy ties and where possible support their development as a key part of its post-2011 strategy for Iraq and the region,” Kane writes.

via Rudaw in English….The Happening: Latest News and Multimedia about Kurdistan, Iraq and the World – Turkey and Iran Vie for Control of Iraq.

July 3, 2011
Turkish Airlines starts Basra flights

Turkish Airlines, the country’s national carrier, has started nonstop flights to Iraqi city of Basra from its hub in Istanbul Ataturk Airport. This is the airline’s third destination in Iraq after Baghdad and Arbil.

The debut flight (TK798), a Boeing 737/800, took off at 7am on Tuesday from Istanbul airport to the Iraqi city.

The Star Alliance member airline said it will fly twice a week – on Thursdays, and Saturdays. Also there is a plan to operate a third flight via Necef from July 5.

The Basra flight will take off from Istanbul at 3.10am and land in the Iraqi city at 6.25am, while on return the flight will depart Basrah at 8:50am and land in Istanbul at 12:15pm.

Also on Tuesday, the Turkish carrier started three weekly flights – Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays- to Italian city of Naples.

Naples flight will take off from Istanbul at 10:30am and arrive in the Italian city at 11:55am, while on return the flight will leave Naples at 12.55pm and land in Istanbul Ataturk Airport at 4.10pm.

The airline is also planning to boost the frequency with two more flights on Wednesdays and Sundays from August 2.

The ticket rates for a Basra two-way trip have been priced at 275 euros ($388), while the Naples fare starts from 180 euros including taxes and fees for travels starting before August 31.

Established in 1933 with a fleet of only five airplanes, Turkish Airlines is today a four-star airline company with a fleet of 169 aircraft flying to 182 destinations comprising 41 domestic and 141 international destinations.-TradeArabia News Service

via Turkish Airlines starts Basra flights.

June 30, 2011
Turkey’s bankers tap into Kurdish boom

ERBIL // At the first branch of the Turkish VakifBank in Iraq, the manager sits proudly in his office under a portrait of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey.

But while Ataturk coveted the oil-rich territory of northern Iraq when he founded Turkey, the banker Yesur Meylani has not come to occupy land. In fact, he is a Kurd – one of more than 21,000 Turks who have moved to Erbil, many in the hope of tapping into the booming cross-border trade.

Yesur Meylani is the manager of VakifBank, a Turkish bank that is opening up branches in Iraq. Lee Hoagland / The National

Masrour Barzani, grandson of the man seen as the founder of the Kurdish national movement, says he wants to change ‘the mentality of people whom we live with to accept the Kurds as equals.’ Read article

With a long history of tension with Kurds in Turkey and a volatile Iraqi border, Turkey might not seem like the ideal business partner for the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region. But against all odds, the relationship is growing.

“The politics and the economics are feeding each other,” Mr Meylani said.

VakifBank, which has about 650 branches in Turkey, opened in Erbil in February “because of the good relations between Turkey and Kurdistan and also because of the volume of trade”, he said.

Turkey’s export volume to Iraq was US$7.5 billion (Dh27.5bn) in 2010, about 70 per cent of which was focused on Iraqi Kurdistan. Much of the trade is carried on trucks that squeeze through the only official border crossing between the two countries at Ibrahim Khalil – around 1,500 in each direction every day.

Aydin Selcen, the consul general at the Turkish consulate in Erbil, said: “The business volume that we have with this region, the Iraqi Kurdistan region, is equal to what we have for Syria, Lebanon, Jordan combined.” said When the consulate opened at one of Erbil’s new office blocks in March 2010, it became Turkey’s third consulate in Iraq.

Iraqi Kurdistan has 16 Turkish schools and two Turkish hospitals, and more than half of the foreign companies registered in the region – 741 in total – are from Turkey, Mr Selcen said. He said trade is “going to increase drastically” as Ankara pushes to reach its target of $25bn of trade annually with Iraq.

One of the main drivers of the economic relationship is Turkey’s thirst for energy to fuel its expanding economy, alongside its desire to diversify suppliers – Russia now provides about 70 per cent of the country’s natural gas.

“What they produce now in natural gas can satisfy one quarter of what we need. So if you add the undiscovered oil and gas resources to already existing ones, it’s for sure an interesting destination for our companies,” Mr Selcen said.

But while cross-border business is flourishing, the Kurdish militants known as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or the PKK, continue to damage relations. The group, which is designated as a terrorist organisation by several states including the US, has a stronghold in Iraq’s remote northern mountains. The guerrillas use the base to launch attacks on Turkey, and the Turks have bombed the rugged terrain, targeting the PKK.

Mr Selcen said counter-terrorism is one of the most important issues of co-operation between the two countries. He said there has been progress, “but this is such a sensitive issue that, of course, we are asking for more”.

Masrour Barzani, the chief of the Kurdistan Region Security Protection Agency, said the PKK operates in “harsh terrain” near the borders of Iraq, Iran and Turkey: “It’s difficult for Turkey to control it. It’s difficult for Iran to control it and it’s definitely difficult for us to control it.”

“We’ve been telling the Turks that we don’t think military solutions are the best solutions. We believe that peaceful solutions are going to last and that’s what we support and I think they understand that now.”

Mr Barzani said: “Trade and economic relations is helping the relationship, because before that there was more tension between the Kurdistan region and Turkey, with the Turks and the Kurds in general.”

Ako Shwani, a history professor at the University of Sulaymaniyah, said the Turks have a history of oppressing the Kurds, but they are changing tack to improve their human rights record in a bid to join the European Union.

Iraq has about 4.5 million to 6 million Kurds; Turkey has 14 million, according to the CIA World Factbook. Mr Shwani said the Turkish government fears that Iraqi Kurdistan’s success could inspire Turkish Kurds to push for independence.

“We have a parliament and a government, and the region’s greater degree of autonomy is not good in the Turkish mind,” he said.

Locals suspect that Turkey is sending its secret police into Iraqi Kurdistan to gather information, he said. “We don’t hate the Turkish people, we hate the Turkish regime.”

In the Souk al Kabeer, or the big market, at the foot of Erbil’s hulking citadel, merchants are taking advantage of the security in the region. The winding corridors teem with shops selling fabrics, perfumes and food; street hawkers polish shoes and sell pirated DVDs with titles such as The Fall of Baghdad.

“We’re happy to trade with Turkey,” said a Turkmen shop owner who gave his name as Mohammed. “Ten years ago, there were only locals here, but now there are people from everywhere and there’s very little poverty.”

Yousef Yaseen, a Kurdish graduate of Erbil University whose family owns five gold shops in the souk, agreed that locals are pleased to see Turks settling in the city.

Some of the Kurds do not support the PKK “troublemakers”, he said. “There are a lot of Turkish companies here. It’s a good thing.”

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via Full: Open for business: Turkey’s bankers tap into Kurdish boom – The National.

June 22, 2011
Iraqi Kurds urge govt to back Syrian protesters

More than 1,200 protesters have been killed in Syria (AFP, Mustafa Ozer)

SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq — Several groups and well-known personalities in Iraq’s Kurdish region have called on authorities to support the pro-democracy movement in Syria, in a joint statement on Wednesday.

“Silence in the face of the crimes committed in Syria is a disgrace and we call on the federal government of Iraq and in Kurdistan to support human rights, freedom and democracy in Syria because it is a moral duty,” said the statement, published in Kurdistan’s second biggest city Sulaimaniyah.

The statement was signed by 11 local organisations, including the Centre for Democratic Rights, and media and cultural personalities.

“We support Syrian citizens who aspire to freedom and a better life based on democracy and respect for human rights, and we condemn the Baathist regime, its savage repression and its crimes against humanity against peaceful demonstrators and the Syrian people,” the statement said.

“The Kurds of Iraq have been victims of the brutality of the Baathist regime, and its desire to eliminate the Kurdish people, and in Syria today, the Kurds are not treated in a manner equal to that of other citizens.”

The Baath party rose to power in 1963 in Syria and five years later in Iraq, where it was officially dissolved and banned after the 2003 US-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein.

Since March 15, more than 1,200 protesters have been killed and 10,000 have been arrested in pro-democracy rallies in Syria, according to activists.

AFP, 15 June 2011

June 18, 2011
Iraq links expansion of bilateral trade to solving water conflict with Turkey

By Ali Latif

Iraq has linked the signing of a new trade agreement with Turkey to the success of negotiations on a water-sharing pact, government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said.

Dabbagh said Iraqi parliament has made the signing of the agreement conditional on solving the water conflict with Turkey.

The new agreement was expected to substantially boost value of Turkish exports to Iraq.

Turkey’s rationing of water volumes reaching Iraq “is unacceptable,” Dabbagh said.

He said: “Turkey still refuses to sign an agreement that will supply Iraq with a certain volume of water” from the rivers Tigris and Euphrates which originate in Turkey.

In a press conference attended by Agriculture Minister Izzudeen al-Dawla, Dabbagh said: “We are going to link all our relations with Turkey with the subject of our water share.”

However, Dabbagh acknowledged that the whole world was facing water problems “but this does not mean that Turkey suffers as much as Iraq does from lack of water.

“Iraq still relies on traditional Irrigation and needs more time to improve its methods,” he said.

The Tigris and Euphrates are more known to be Iraqi rivers, though they get almost all their waters from Turkey.

The volume of water flowing through the rivers has receded in the past few years and if climate change continues experts believe that both rivers will dry in less than three decades.

via Azzaman in English.

May 26, 2011
Operation Donkey brings Iraqi equine to US

Operation Donkey brings Iraqi equine to US

(AP) – 21 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — It took 37 days and a group of determined animal lovers, but a donkey from Iraq is now a U.S. resident.

In this Sept. 11, 2008 photo provided by the Department of Defense and Retired Marine Col. John Folsom, Smoke the Donkey takes part in a Freedom Walk event at Camp Taqaddum, Iraq. It took 37 days and a group of determined animal-lovers, but the donkey from Iraq is now a U.S. resident. Smoke The Donkey, who became the friend and mascot of a group of U.S. Marines living in Iraq’s Anbar Province nearly three years ago, arrived in New York this week aboard a cargo jet from Turkey. After being quarantined for two days he was released Saturday and began road trip to Omaha, Nebraska, where he is destined to become a therapy animal. (AP Photo/Department of Defense)

Smoke The Donkey, who became a friend and mascot to a group of U.S. Marines living in Iraq’s Anbar Province nearly three years ago, arrived in New York this week aboard a cargo jet from Turkey. After being quarantined for two days he was released Saturday and began a road trip to Omaha, Neb., where he is destined to become a therapy animal.

The chest-high donkey’s story begins in the summer of 2008, when he wandered in to Camp Taqaddum west of Fallujah, a former Iraqi air base being used by Marines.

The smoke-colored donkey, which once snatched and ate a cigarette from a careless Marine, soon became such a part of the unit that he received his own care packages and cards. Marines took care of him until 2009 when they left the area, but they turned Smoke over to a sheik who promised to care for him.

But one of the Marines, retired Col. John Folsom, couldn’t forget Smoke.

Folsom used to walk Smoke daily and had formed a bond with the animal. It didn’t seem right that Smoke was left behind, he said in a telephone interview Saturday.

Folsom, the founder of a support group for military families, Wounded Warriors Family Support, decided to see if Smoke could be brought to the United States to serve as a therapy animal.

Getting Smoke back proved more difficult than Folsom realized. At first, the sheik demanded $30,000 for the famous donkey, a demand that was later dropped. Then, there was the bureaucracy of getting Smoke nearly 7,000 miles around the world: blood tests, health certifications and forms from customs, agriculture and airline officials.

To cut through the red tape, Folsom got help from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals International, which has a project that transports dogs and cats from Iraq to the United States.

The group, however, had never attempted airlifting a donkey, which is more complicated because equines can’t be transported on traditional commercial aircraft and must go by cargo plane.

The donkey’s journey has provided laughter — and head scratching — along the way.

“People just couldn’t believe we were going to these great lengths to help a donkey because donkeys in that part of the world are so low down on the totem pole,” said the society’s Terri Crisp, who negotiated the donkey’s passage from Iraq to the United States. “Donkeys are not viewed as a companion animal. They’re viewed as a work animal.”

As frustrating as the journey sometimes was for those involved, including a week-long delay getting Smoke in to Turkey and another three weeks to get out, the donkey found friends and supporters along the way, Crisp said. They included the U.S. ambassador in Turkey, who at one point was getting daily updates.

“I think people did finally come to realize that this is one of these out-of the-ordinary situations. Once you met him and saw what a unique donkey he was, it was hard to say no to him,” Crisp said, describing Smoke as “gentle” and “mischievous” as well as a food-lover — carrots and apples in particular.

The journey, which started April 5, wasn’t cheap.

The society estimates it cost between $30,000 to $40,000 from start to finish, with expenses such as $150 to ship Smoke’s blood from Turkey to a U.S. Department of Agriculture lab in Iowa, $18,890 for a Lufthansa flight through Frankfurt, Germany and $400 a day for quarantine in New York. Folsom says he recognizes some people may be critical of the expense, which was paid for through donations, but he says he considers it payback for the donkey that was such a friend to Marines.

“Why do we spend billions of dollars of pet food in this country? Why do we do that?” Folsom said. “We love our animals. That’s why.”

Folsom saw the donkey for the first time in years Saturday when he arrived in New York to transport him to his new home in Omaha. By Saturday afternoon they had driven through Baltimore and were on their way to Warrenton, Va., for meet-and-greet with some fans. The journey to Omaha is expected to take two days, and Folsom said Smoke is already getting used to seeing big, green trees instead of desert.

“He’s an American donkey now,” Folsom said.

Copyright © 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

via The Associated Press: Operation Donkey brings Iraqi equine to US.

May 15, 2011