Turkey Seeks 'Interdependence' With Iraqi Kurdistan
Turkish officials seek to set the record straight that Ankara seeks interdependence with, not independence for, Iraqi Kurdistan, writes Tulin Daloglu.
“Turkey’s policy is to strengthen economic interdependence with Iraqi Kurds, not to leverage them to independence,” a prominent Turkish official told Al-Monitor.
As Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is trying to bring a closure to Turkey’s Kurdish issue once and for all, his policy also comes under the scrutiny of the neighboring countries.
Turkey has long been vexed by the aspirations for self-determination of the Kurdish people both inside its borders and in neighboring countries.
How strange then that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki would complain, as he did on Dec. 31 in an interview with the Someria TV channel, about Turkey's efforts to "divide Iraq" into Arab and Kurdish entities, while pronouncing them a failure.
