Turkey poised to open a military front in Iraq
Improved relations between Iraq and Turkey have raised the possibility of a joint offensive against Kurdish militants in northern Iraq.
Turkish-Iraqi relations had become extremely tense until the decision by Massoud Barzani, former president of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), to hold an independence referendum for Iraqi Kurdistan. Barzani's ill-fated move made fast friends of Ankara and Baghdad. Now, it appears that Turkey and Iraq have found further common cause, this time for joint military action against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
Agreements signed by Ankara and the KRG on oil and natural gas were, not so long ago, a major source of dispute with Baghdad. As an additional irritant, an Iraqi vice president, Tarek al-Hashemi, accused of leading a terror organization and sentenced to death in absentia for a number of related deaths, had taken refuge in Istanbul under the protection of the Turkish government. Ties between Ankara and Baghdad then neared the point of rupture over Turkish forces' presence at the Bashiqa military base, near Mosul, in anticipation of that city's liberation from the Islamic State (IS).
Barzani’s decision in the face of widespread opposition to nonetheless proceed with the independence referendum, held last Sept. 25, thawed most of the ice between Ankara and Baghdad. Turkey announced that it would not recognize the results of the referendum and backed sanctions that Baghdad imposed on Erbil. The Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) began massing troops on territory adjacent to northern Iraq and for the first time held a joint military exercise with the Iraqi army. The developing rapprochement peaked with Turkey’s announcement of a $5 billion credit for Iraq's reconstruction after the defeat of IS.
With Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi upset over the Turkish military forces in Bashiqa, and with tensions mounting over plans to liberate Mosul, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had warned Abadi in October 2016 to “know your limits,” and further admonished, “You are not at my level.” A year later, the same Erdogan warmly welcomed Abadi during a visit to Ankara and praised the Iraqi army’s success against IS. Ankara then proposed cooperating to cleanse the region of terror.
