Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu flew to Baghdad on Aug. 20 for an official visit that was meant to calm growing tensions spurred by what Iraq’s Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki charges are his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s overtly interventionist and pro-Sunni policies. But if his true aim — as some critics claim — was to embarrass Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), it was Kilicdaroglu who came away with egg on his face.

Flanked by an army of businessmen and journalists, Kilicdaroglu had set himself an ambitious itinerary. After Baghdad, he was due to travel to Kirkuk, Karbala and Najaf, where the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani had agreed after much cajoling to grant the CHP leader an audience. Instead, after meetings with Maliki, parliament speaker Osama al-Nujaifi and assorted Turkmen leaders, Kilicdaroglu abruptly announced that he was heading home.

The precise details of why the visit was cut short remain unclear. CHP sources claim it all began when Kirkuk’s Kurdish governor, bowing to pressure from the AKP, refused to meet with Kilicdaroglu. Others cite security concerns. Kilicdaroglu’s advisers are said to have persuaded him to cancel the meeting with Sistani as well, so as not to reduce the trip to “an all-Shiite affair.” Either way, the CHP came away having achieved little else “than getting sunburned in the hellish Iraqi heat,” noted a disgruntled CHP lawmaker, who declined to be identified by name, in an interview with Al-Monitor.

Kilicdaroglu’s top foreign policy adviser, Faruk Lologlu, put on a brave face as he assured reporters upon his return that the CHP had been received on a scale no prior visiting dignitary had seen. Moreover, the CHP had opened a channel of communication between the central government in Baghdad and hundreds of Turkish businessmen hurt by the chill in relations.