Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan might have stood out as the most influential participant in the regional conference in Baghdad last week, but his confrontational foreign policies kept him away from the gathering.
Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu represented Turkey at the Aug. 28 Baghdad Conference for Cooperation and Partnership, which brought together Iraq’s neighbors, other regional countries and France. Among Iraq’s other four neighbors, Iran and Saudi Arabia sent their foreign ministers as well, while Jordan was represented by its king and Kuwait by its prime minister. The emir of Qatar, the prime minister of the United Arab Emirates and the president of Egypt were other high-profile attendees, while French President Emmanuel Macron stood out as an external actor. He also paid visits to Mosul and Iraqi Kurdistan, two regions critical for Turkish interests.
That Erdogan shunned the conference speaks of how Turkey’s confrontational foreign policy has come to constrain it, even as it has recently moved to mend fences with Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
The conference came as part of Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi’s efforts to extricate his country from being the front line of rivalry and wrangling between various powers. His road map involves efforts to end US-Iranian score-settling via Iraq, but also an offer for good neighborly relations with Turkey, whose military operations on Iraqi territory have significantly expanded as part of a stepped-up crackdown on the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). Kadhimi’s government knows it must diversify its regional ties to rid itself of the constraints that have emboldened Iran and Turkey to believe that Iraq is largely dependent on them. Standing out in Baghdad’s efforts is a quest to revive bonds with the Arab world, including a trilateral cooperation platform with Egypt and Jordan that is likely to advance not only Iraq’s regional integration but also its economic alternatives, including an energy corridor from Basra to the Jordanian port of Aqaba.
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