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| Maliki demands respect for Iraq’s sovereignty |
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Tayyip Erdogan visits Baghdad
Friday, October 16, 2009
BAGHDAD: The Turkish and Iraqi premiers held talks in Baghdad on Thursday on the thorniest disputes between their two countries as Ankara moved to boost its Arab ties amid a growing spat with Israel.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was expected to sign some 20 agreements during the visit, most of them related to Turkey’s fast-growing trade with its southeastern neighbour, Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh told AFP.
In his talks with his Iraqi counterpart Nuri al-Maliki, Erdogan tackled both Ankara’s concerns about border security and the rebel Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), and Baghdad’s concerns about how to share the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, Dabbagh said.
Erdogan secured Maliki’s agreement to work closely on tackling the rear-bases in northern Iraq which the PKK has used in its 25-year-old insurgency in southeastern Turkey.
“There will be a tri-partite committee with Turkey, Iraq and the United States to deal with the issue of the PKK,” Dabbagh said. Maliki in turn voiced Baghdad’s concern about the infringement of its sovereignty implied by the Turkish parliament’s decision earlier this month to renew for a third straight year its authorisation for military operations against the PKK across the border into Iraq.
“Iraq said it has nothing to do with PKK operations that take place, and its only responsibility is to protect the sovereignty of Iraq,” Dabbagh said.
“Nuri al-Maliki demanded respect for Iraq’s sovereignty, and said nobody can violate it.”
Since Turkish MPs first approved cross-border operations in 2007, the Turkish military has mounted a string of air raids against suspected PKK rear-bases, using intelligence supplied by the United States.
In February 2008, it even carried out a week-long ground incursion. Maliki also put forward Iraqi proposals to formalise the sharing of the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers which have their sources in Turkey but are vital for Iraqi farmers.
“No agreements have been signed yet, but there are some protocols about water issues that have been discussed,” the Iraqi government spokesman said. He said the flow of water currently coming into Iraq from Turkey was 440 cubic metres per second. One cubic metre is equivalent to 35.3 cubic feet. In August, Iraq complained that Turkey had cut the flow back to only 250 m3/s — around a quarter of the minimum requirement for irrigation. But last month Dabbagh said Ankara had agreed to raise that to between 450 and 500 m3/s.
Both Iraq and its western neighbour Syria have often complained that Turkey monopolises the waters of the Euphrates and Tigris through a series of dams built on both rivers as part of a massive irrigation project. Turkey argues that the dams allow for better management, ensuring a constant flow of water downstream unaffected by seasonal changes.
A delegation of eight Turkish ministers was in Syria on Tuesday as Ankara moved to cement a rapprochement with Damascus which began a decade ago when the regime cuts its ties with the PKK. Syria’s Defence Minister Ali Habib said Syria would hold joint war games with Turkey for the second time this year.
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ISSN 1563-9479 
