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Turkey’s Kurdish Policies Complicate Ties With Iran, Iraq

Turkey’s Kurdish policies are developing at the expense of its ties with Iran and Iraq. 
Workers hang portraits of modern Turkey's founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (L), President Abdullah Gul (2nd L) and Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan before a groundbreaking ceremony for the third Bosphorus bridge linking the European and Asian sides of Istanbul May 29, 2013. REUTERS/Murad Sezer (TURKEY - Tags: BUSINESS CONSTRUCTION POLITICS) - RTX1051J
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Turkey, once a shining star, with its foreign policy focused on image-building mediation roles, adopted an interventionist stance in the Syrian crisis and went from a “zero problems with neighbors” policy to “zero neighbors.” Ankara’s only consolation is its deepening ties with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq that both sides refer to as “strategic relations.” Without a doubt, their annual volume of trade, which has reached $9 billion, lends the impression of strategic depth, but the springtime weather along the Ankara-Erbil axis remains a bit unstable.

Although the two sides are trying to eradicate mutual suspicions arising from past experience, they continue to harbor reservations about one another. Thus, it is worth examining Ankara’s relations with Erbil given the regional dimensions and thus their possible bearing on relations with their neighbors. Not long ago, when Turkey’s priority was relations with Baghdad, its relations with northern Iraq, today’s southern Kurdistan, were guided by Kirkuk and Turkmens’ problems. Today there are three essential elements guiding Ankara’s relations with Erbil: the peace process with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK); Syrian Kurdish autonomy issues, which caught Ankara off guard; and energy projects.

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