Turkey's Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan (R) meets
Iraq's Kurdistan President Massoud Barzani at his
office in Istanbul November 5, 2011. Photo: Reuters.
• Read more by
Dr. Denise Natali
September 26, 2012
Ankara’s ongoing missteps in Iraq may cost it
another valuable regional ally. Not only has Turkish
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan failed to create
and lead a grand Sunni Muslim alliance that could
check Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s power,
but his policies have undermined essential Turkish
interests in Iraq. Baghdad has recently stopped
awarding commercial licenses to Turkish companies,
Sunni Arabs are turning toward Maliki and the PKK
continues to operate from bases in Iraqi Kurdistan.
If Turkey wants to keep its borders secure and
become a regional energy hub, then it may have to
re-think its sectarian-based foreign policy,
understand the limits of soft-power politics and
more clearly reaffirm its commitment to Iraqi
sovereignty.
The deterioration of Ankara-Baghdad relations is not
a by-product of the so-called Arab Spring or the
Syrian crisis, but a result of Erdogan’s
personalized politics and miscalculation of Iraqi
and Kurdish nationalism. Indeed, the Turkish premier
has created useful partnerships to help secure
Ankara’s stakes in Northern Iraq’s energy wealth.
With Turkish backing, former rivals Atheel al-Nujaifi,
the governor of Mosul Province, which is the heart
of Sunni Arab Iraqi nationalism, and Massoud
Barzani, president of the Kurdistan Regional
Government (KRG) are now discussing ways to
cooperate on oil contracts, including the ExxonMobil
deal. Erdogan’s Barzani alliance also has helped
create a productive Iraqi Kurdish client state and a
direct outlet for Turkish oil and gas imports.
Still, Erdogan has overestimated the influence of
Turkish soft power and Sunni Islamic identities in
Iraq. Rather than form a cohesive Sunni Arab-Kurdish
bloc that could advance Turkish interests beyond
Erbil, anti-Maliki factions in the government have
seen their influence decline. Ayad Allawi and his
Iraqiyya collegues have become almost irrelevant to
Iraqi politics, while Nujaifi has seen his support
base weaken. Nor has the KRG gained greater leverage
from fellow Sunni Muslims in Baghdad; after seven
years, it still unable to pass a national
hydrocarbons law and fully pay its oil companies.
Ankara may have no real interest in a fragmented
Iraq, but its Iraqi Kurdish ally does. And as the
KRG aggressively pursues its national interests in
disputed lands, Turkey has become inadvertently
implicated. Ankara has not helped the matter by
playing off Baghdad and Erbil, feeding into Iraq’s
internal power struggles and encouraging Kurdish
maximalist behavior. While stating its interest in
Iraqi oil imports through the official state
pipeline, Turkey is also bartering Kurdish crude for
its own refined products and egging on Kurdish
discourse of an independent pipeline. Turkish
Foreign Minister Ahmet Davatoglu’s recent
unauthorized visit to Kirkuk has only reinforced
suspicions by many Arab Iraqis that Ankara is
working with the KRG to undermine Iraq’s territorial
integrity.
The reaction on the Iraqi streets has hurt Turkey
and its allies and helped Baghdad. Maliki is feeding
off the brewing concern over Kurdish territorial
ambitions by appealing to Iraqi Arab nationalism. He
has already reversed some anti-Ba’athification laws
in Mosul and other Sunni Arab strongholds, appeased
key Sunni Arab tribal leaders and formed Sunni Arab
military units to defend Iraqi territory. These
reactions negatively impact Ankara’s interests
because they further politicize the Iraqi energy
sector and create additional bottlenecks to
exporting Kurdish crude through Turkey — a project
in which many Turkish companies are vested.
Ankara has miscalculated Iraq in another important
way. It has overestimated Barzani’s influence and
his ability to quell rising cross-border Kurdish
nationalism. Despite five years of soft-power
incentives,www.ekurd.net
the KRG is still unable to control the PKK or its
sister branches in Syria and Iran. In fact, Barzani
may have no real interest in removing the PKK from
his territory because he needs the group to leverage
Turkey. Nor has Ankara won the hearts and minds of
the vast majority of Iraqi Kurds, who look to
Diyarbakir to reaffirm their Kurdish nationalism and
tacit support for the PKK.
While continuing to rely on particular Iraqi groups
as commercial and political partners, Ankara should
rethink its efforts to use these alliances to
leverage the Iraqi central government. Instead of
engaging Sunni Arabs and Kurds against Baghdad,
Turkish officials should take the lead in
negotiating an agreement between them. One area of
potential mutual interest is developing the northern
corridor, which sources the existing Turkish-Iraqi
pipeline and could provide an alternative oil-export
route to the Straits of Hormuz. By working directly
with Baghdad to repair the pipeline(s), Ankara can
affirm its commitment to Iraqi sovereignty,
influence the KRG to settle with Baghdad, help
increase Iraqi oil exports and advance its own
energy-hub ambitions. Moreover, this effort could
send a clear signal that Turkey seeks to strengthen
the Iraqi state and not undermine it.
Dr.
Denise Natali is the Minerva Fellow at the
Institute for National Strategic Studies INSS,
National Defense University and the author of
The Kurdish Quasi-State: Development and
Dependency in Post Gulf War Iraq. The views
expressed are her own and do not reflect the
official policy or position of the National Defense
University, the Department of Defense, or the U.S.
government.
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