Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi is due to travel to Turkey on Tuesday where he will meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Coming on the heels of his first formal foreign trips — first to the United States, then Iran — Zaidi’s visit is meant to emphasize the ever-deepening ties between Ankara and Baghdad.

The top agenda items will be water, energy, trade and security cooperation, diplomatic sources speaking on background told Al-Monitor. 

The rapprochement is being encouraged by the Trump administration but, as viewed from Erbil, comes at the Kurds’ expense. Tom Barrack, the US ambassador to Ankara who also serves as the president’s special envoy to Syria and Iraq, is advocating stronger economic and security ties between the three neighbors. “Strengthened economic and diplomatic ties between the three countries align with Barrack’s vision to establish a trade and investment corridor and to center US policy around commerce,” Victoria Taylor, the State Department’s former deputy assistant secretary for Iran and Iraq and director of the Iraq Initiative and the Syria Project at the Atlantic Council, told Al-Monitor.

That vision extends beyond the Levant to the Gulf, as part of a broader effort to balance Iran’s outsized regional influence. It also chimes with Turkey’s much-touted Development Road project, a multibillion-dollar scheme that would connect Iraq’s Grand Faw Port on the Arabian Gulf — currently under construction — to Europe via Turkey.