Courcy’s Intelligence Brief

The sharp deterioration in relations between Iraq and Turkey has, according to some sources, reached breaking point.  At the same time, relations between Turkey and Iran clearly remain strained.

The proximate cause of the crisis between Turkey and Iran is the refusal of Turkey to extradite Iraq’s Vice-President Tareq al-Hashimi to Baghdad on murder charges.  But the problem dates back at least to 2010 when Ankara supported Iyad Allawi in the Iraqi elections against the present pro-Iranian Shia prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki.  Relations had deteriorated to such an extent by May this year that al-Maliki was accusing Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of having “hostile intent”.

Turkey has developed a close relationship with the leader of Iraqi Kurdistan, Masoud Barzani, and it supports the Iraqi Sunni Arabs, both of which groups are being marginalized by the al-Maliki government.  Turkey’s relationship with the Iraqi Kurds includes signing oil deals and exporting crude oil from Iraqi Kurdistan through pipelines linking to the Ceyhan oil terminal on the Mediterranean, all without reference to Baghdad.  On Syria, Ankara is openly hostile to the Assad regime, while Iraq, although not overtly supportive of Assad, is tacitly taking the Iranian line.  The differences have now been compounded by the al-Hashimi affair and by Baghdad’s response of suspending the registration of Turkish companies working in Iraq.

Separately, the tense nature of relations between Turkey and Iran was also on display this week.  When Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili met with Erdogan on Tuesday, it was noticed that there was no Turkish official present to greet him at the entrance to the prime minister’s office.  Witnesses say that the Iranian ambassador accompanying Jalili looked particularly disconcerted.  Jalili was met by an official inside the building, who took him to the meeting room.  Local sources say that the snub was prompted, in part, by the way Erdogan had been treated during a visit to Tehran in April.  During that visit, the Iranian side postponed at the last minute a scheduled meeting between Erdogan and Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, saying the Iranian leader was ill.  The Turks were unconvinced.

A Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) terrorist who was captured by Turkish security forces recently has reportedly revealed that 600 of the 1,000 PKK terrorists who are active in the southeastern Turkish province of Hakkari have come from a camp located in Iran.