Turkey’s Kurdish Policies Complicate Ties With Iran, Iraq
By: Fehim Taştekin for Al-Monitor Turkey Pulse Posted on May 30.
Turkey, once a shining star, with its foreign policy focused on image-building mediation roles, adopted an interventionist stance in the Syrian crisis and went from a “zero problems with neighbors” policy to “zero neighbors.” Ankara’s only consolation is its deepening ties with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq that both sides refer to as “strategic relations.” Without a doubt, their annual volume of trade, which has reached $9 billion, lends the impression of strategic depth, but the springtime weather along the Ankara-Erbil axis remains a bit unstable.
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