Iraq's prime minister visits Turkey as neighbors work to strengthen cooperation

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani arrived successful Turkey connected Thursday for talks with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan arsenic their 2 neighboring countries determination guardant with efforts to fortify practice and repair antecedently tense ties.

The talks successful Ankara are expected to absorption connected a caller bid effort betwixt Turkey and a Kurdish militant radical that has a foothold successful Iraq, arsenic good arsenic water supplies to Iraq. Erdogan’s bureau said that Turkish and Iraqi officials volition ink a bid of practice agreements during the visit.

Relations betwixt Turkey and Iraq were often strained implicit Turkish subject incursions into bluish Iraq for operations against the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party, oregon PKK, and the constitution of Turkish subject bases there. Baghdad often condemned the incursions arsenic a usurpation of its sovereignty.

More recently, however, the 2 countries person deepened practice connected security, including addressing the PKK beingness successful bluish Iraq. Erdogan visited Baghdad past twelvemonth for the archetypal clip successful much than a decade.

Also past year, Iraq announced that the Iraqi National Security Council had issued a prohibition connected the PKK, though it stopped abbreviated of designating it arsenic a violent organization.

The sojourn comes aft the PKK’s jailed leader, Abdullah Ocalan, called connected his radical to dissolve and disarm arsenic portion of a new bid inaugural with Turkey. The radical declared a unilateral ceasefire successful March and is present expected to clasp a legislature successful bluish Iraq, during which it would denote its dissolution, Turkish officials person said.

The PKK, which has maintained bases successful bluish Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region, has fought Turkey for an autonomous Kurdish state. The struggle has claimed tens of thousands of lives since the 1980s. Turkey and its Western allies person designated the PKK a violent organization.

In caller years, Iraqi officials person complained that dams built by Turkey are reducing Iraq’s h2o supply.

The Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, which supply astir of Iraq’s caller water, originate successful Turkey. Experts fearfulness that clime alteration is apt to exacerbate existing h2o shortages successful Iraq, with perchance devastating consequences.