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.

The path to peace with the PKK

KRG President Massoud Barzani has a critical role to play in the three-phase Turkish-PKK peace plan based on the withdrawal of armed PKK elements from Turkey into northern Iraq, implementing legal arrangements that will satisfy Kurdish demands and disarmament. A sixth PKK unit has already crossed into northern Iraq as part of the withdrawal process, which Selahattin Demirtas, co-chair of the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party, indicated at a news conference on May 24 will be finished by the end of June.