However, although Turkey would not want to see Iraq split – “when we consider these [energy] projects, our priority is the territorial integrity of Iraq,” Turkey’s energy minister, Taner Yildiz, told the Financial Times recently - Turkey seems to believe a trade off can be arranged with the Iraqi Kurdish government. Although the Iraqi Kurdish authorities have made it clear that they will not confront the PKK militarily, they do have the option of cutting off the guerrilla group’s supply lines and limiting their activities in the region.
It is not yet clear as to whether this is on the bargaining table. But it is possible that it is, if Turkey is serious about doing a deal with the KRG, not just posturing.
As Chris Bowers, the British Consul General in Erbil, put it during a conference held in London this week, Iraq Petroleum 2012, “Turkey used to see the Kurdistan region through the prism of security - but now it looks at [Iraqi Kurdistan] through the prism of energy.”
“Turkey may have a historical fear of Kurdish nationalism but it has slowly come to terms with the huge benefits that stability and constructive relations with the Kurds bring,” Kurdish editor Bashdar Pusho Ismaeel wrote recently in local newspaper, the Kurdish Globe. “Ultimately money talks and no rational government can ignore the massive trade and energy opportunities that come with a growing economic power-house such as Kurdistan. Iraq is already Turkeys biggest trade partner, with Kurdistan accounting for the majority of that trade.”
There are also obvious international and regional ramifications. The discussion over pipelines is just a small part of ongoing problems between Erbil and Baghdad with wider, geo-political influencers also at work.
And lately relations between the Shiite Muslim-led coalition government in Baghdad, headed by Iraqi prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the authorities in Iraqi Kurdistan do not appear to be getting any friendlier.
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