Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu is due to travel to Iraq on Oct. 11 for a two-day official visit to the capital Baghdad and the Iraqi Kurdistan Region’s seat of government, Erbil.

Turkey’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Cavusoglu would be received by Iraq’s newly elected ethnic Kurdish President Barham Salih and that he would also meet with Iraqi political leaders and Turkmen representatives. The trip, Cavusoglu’s first since August 2017, when he traveled to both capitals to lobby against the Iraqi Kurds’ ill fated independence referendum, is seen as an effort to re-assert Turkey’s heft in Iraq amid the receding fortunes of its local Sunni Arab allies.

The Foreign Ministry noted that Cavusoglu’s meetings would focus on bilateral cooperation, especially on the reconstruction of Iraq. In February, Turkey pledged $5 billion in lines of credit for Iraqi reconstruction at a donors conference in Kuwait. Contracting deals in Iraq would throw a lifeline to Turkey’s tottering economy, whose growth was long fueled by mega construction companies with close ties to Turkey’s strongman President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Coming before a Nov. 4 deadline imposed by the United States for abiding with sanctions on Iran’s oil and gas industry, the visit will allow Cavusoglu to discuss ways to deal with the situation. Turkey relies heavily on Iran for almost half of its energy needs. And with a crisis looming with another top oil supplier, Saudi Arabia, over the alleged murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi on the premises of the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul, the need to revive oil exports from the Kirkuk oil fields is more pressing than ever.