“Neighbors in two adjoining houses: Turkey and Iraq”

Ali Rıza Güney started his speech by calling the relationship between Turkey and Iraq a “win-win relationship”. He underlined that the negativities or developments that take place in the gardens of neighbors living in these “adjacent houses” should concern both sides the most. Ambassador Çavuşoğlu stated that Iraq is one of the difficult countries to analyze due to sectarian and ethnic differences. He emphasized that such differences exist in every society, but the important thing is to maintain national unity. He stated that the difficulty in analyzing Iraq stems not only from these differences, but also from the problems such as the Iraq-Iran war, the Iraq War, the Iraq War, sectarian wars, terrorist problems and organizations in a very intense 40-year period. Mr. Güney said that Iraq has entered a cycle of civil war-terror-occupation with no way out in this process. He also stated that this handicap can be called “political trauma” for Iraqi citizens and politicians. Underlining that Iraq is one of the intellectual centers of the region, Ambassador Güney stated that Turkey-Iraq relations are important to prevent this intellectual center from being used as a political field by other actors.

“Economic-Commercial”

In this part of his speech, Ali Rıza Güney stated that products exported from Turkey are very popular in Iraq. He attributed this to the speed and quality of the products coming from Turkey. Mr. Ambassador, who wanted to draw attention to the similarity of life in Basra to the Turkish lifestyle, used the expression “Basra has completely turned its face to Turkey”.

“Soft Power”

Ali Rıza Güney linked the advancement of relations between Turkey and Iraq to two types of power: soft and smart power. Of these, the concept of soft power was repeated and exemplified at many points of our event. First of all, Mr. Ambassador pointed to Iraq’s young population and the fact that 700-800 thousand young people enter various sectors every year with the need to find a job. As an example of soft power, he gave Turkey’s providing employment to these young people and reducing unemployment. With a special emphasis on the media sector, the Ambassador noted that the TV series that are being or have already been filmed in Turkey have a great impact in Iraq. He pointed out the many positive outcomes of this cultural interest between the two countries. In particular, he stated that many people have learned Turkish as a result of the interest in Turkish culture in Iraq through the TV series. In addition, he added that the Turkish Language and Literature department at Baghdad University has been opened and is in demand. He also underlined that it is important to keep the relations strong in the following years by using these powers, to get closer to the people and what is important is the interest and interest on the streets.

“Three problematic issues: Water, Security and Turkmen”

Ambassador Ali Rıza Güney stated that both countries are disturbed by the disagreements caused by black propaganda on the water issue. He stated that Turkey has not cut off the water supply to Iraq and that this problem is caused by the global warming that is increasing its effect in the region. He stated that the impact of global warming on the region, combined with the deficiencies in the use and protection of water in Iraq, caused serious problems. He said that Turkey has made an effort to raise awareness in the region with infrastructure projects reaching down to Basra. At this point, he justified the importance of the infrastructure works provided by Turkey in the region and that they are seen as legitimate by the people of the region.

The second problem that attracted attention was the security problem. Mr. Ambassador started with the entry of DAESH into Iraq via Syria in 2014. He said that Iraq remained ineffective for a long time after that. Although the countries in the region will support Iraq’s national unity, he stated that he thinks that the first move should be made by Iraq for the field struggle. He stated that it was devastating that the Yezidis in the region were caught between the DAESH-PKK conflict after the Iraqi government was ineffective, and that this region was later taken over by the PKK and the civilians in the region were dervishized. He stated that such organizations never adhered to the pure ideology they had when they first emerged and that they were used by other major actors, but that they fought against terrorist organizations in the region as many parties within Iraq had increased awareness on this issue. At this point, the sentence we need to remind again is “Common problem, common struggle.” It was the sentence.

Drawing attention to the awareness in the Iraqi army and state system, Mr. Güney also explained the reactions to the operations carried out by Turkey. He explained that the Iraqi administration is aware that the PKK is a terrorist organization and that they are aware of the process of our operations and at this point the PKK is nesting in Northern Iraq and Turkey’s main task is to allow Iraq to protect itself. However, he stated that as a result of Iraq’s inactivity, nearly 400 terrorist attacks have been organized on the Turkish border in recent years. As a result, he said, when Iraq does not provide protection in the region, Turkey should provide protection without harming civilians through a technique called pinpoint strikes.

The last of these three issues was the Turkmen issue. Ali Rıza Güney firstly stated that Iraq has a constitutionally federal structure. He stated that the Turkish and Iraqi governments are trying to manage their bilateral relations within the constitutional framework with legitimate parameters. He underlined that there is no distinction between Turkmens and Turks from Turkey, but that they are all Iraqi citizens as stated in the Iraqi constitution. At this point, Mr. Ambassador drew attention to the 2017 Referendum Crisis and emphasized that the masses defending the integrity of Iraq and Iraqi identity were not represented. He stated that there are many different groups in Iraq (Sunni-Shiite/ Kurdish-Turkish) and that the instability of one of these groups will cause problems. For this reason, he said that the only solution is for Iraq to accept ethnic and sectarian diversity. He also said that the view of the countries decides whether the Turkmen issue is a problem or not.

Efsa Demirhan