Title: Erbil-Ankara Relations: Paradoxes, Challenges and Harmonization
Author: Sardar Sharif and Khalid Said Towfiq
Publisher: The Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies
Release date: 2015

Iraqi Kurdish-Turkish relations are mostly synonymous with former-President Turgut Ozal’s historical initiative. As thousands of Kurds fled to Turkey, Ozal met secretly with Kurdish Iraqi leaders on March 8, 1991 (a gathering that became public on March 22). Additionally, the United Nations Security Council Resolution to protect Kurds in northern Iraq could not have been implemented or have succeeded without Turkish permission. In Ozal’s words aptly summarizing his political approach in protecting the Kurds: “There is nothing to be afraid of talking” […] “We must be friends with them. If we become enemies, others can use them against us'', an approach that changed the policy toward the Kurds from one based on enmity to one based on friendship. In contrast, the presence of the PKK within Kurdish territory in northern Iraq transformed Kurdish-Turkish relations, with Turkey increasing its political pressure on the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) to cooperate to defeat the PKK. As Massoud Barzani, leader of the KDP, confirmed, “There has been no change in our stance on this issue, the PKK’s presence in our region is unacceptable.”Although Turkey was becoming more anxious, in 1991 it allowed both the KDP and PUK to open official representative offices in Ankara to conduct diplomatic relations with the government. These developed into meaningful channels of communication with the international community, through embassies located in Ankara.[1]