Iraqi PM travels to Turkey to address economic and security issues
Iraq's Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kazemi will travel to Turkey on December 17 following an invitation from Ottoman leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Security and the economy will be the main topics discussed by Mustafa al-Kazemi and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, as the Iraqi ambassador in Ankara, Hassan al-Khanabi, acknowledged to the Turkish news agency Anadolu.
Also, in statements to the newspaper Al-Sabaah, Al-Janabi confirmed that the Iraqi prime minister will visit Turkey on December 17 at the invitation of the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to discuss issues of great relevance to both sides.
The two political leaders will focus on “cross-border penetration of terrorists, military operations and bolstering trade exchange, which currently stands at $15 billion”, as the ambassador himself acknowledged. “The discussions will also cover water cooperation, borders, oil imports and economy,” Al-Janabi said.
Turkish activity at border crossings to enter the Iraqi zone is more than known in order to harass members of the Kurdish ethnic group, which the Eurasian state accuses of carrying out terrorist actions south of its own territory.
Turkey's interference on the borders with Syria and Iraq is intense to attack positions of representatives of Iraqi Kurdistan and Kurdish-Syrians, with the excuse of action against alleged insurgent and terrorist elements. All this is part of the expansionist strategy of Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Turkey, which seeks to extend its geopolitical and economic influence in the Middle East and eastern Mediterranean environment, even through participation in open civil wars such as that of Libya and Syria itself and furthermore by resorting to the use of paid mercenaries linked to groups that were once linked to terrorist Jihadist organisations such as Daesh or al-Qaeda.
This will be the first visit of the Iraqi prime minister to Turkey since he took office in May in a rather turbulent time for Iraq due to the popular protests against the bad socio-economic situation of the Iraqi country and the interference of foreign countries like Iran or the USA in domestic affairs.
On the other hand, it should be remembered that at the beginning of this year the Turkish ambassador to Iraq, Fatih Yildiz, said that trade exchange between the two countries reached 15.8 billion dollars in 2019, as reported by the Middle East Monitor.
This is another option for Turkey, which is still going through a serious economic and financial crisis with a collapse of the Turkish lira and high inflation.