Talks on water, PKK and a deal that allows Iraq to resume oil exports to Turkey
ALBAWABA – Iraqi and Turkish ministers met on Tuesday for talks which resulted in an agreement that would allow Iraq to resume oil exports to Turkey soon, news agencies reported.
So far, the results of the meeting were to allow Turkey and Iraq to finalise pipeline maintenance before resuming oil flow, said an oil ministry statement, according to Reuters.
However, unnamed energy sources with knowledge of the meeting in Ankara told Reuters the talks were fruitful but did not result in an agreement to immediately resume northern Iraqi oil exports.
The two countries are going to further discuss resuming northern Iraqi oil exports in the near future, the sources said.
Notably, turkey halted flows on March 25 after an arbitration ruling by the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) ordered Ankara to pay Baghdad damages of $1.5 billion. The penalties was enforced on charges of unauthorised exports by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) between 2014 and 2018.
Despite Iraqi Kurdistan being a semi-autonomous region, Baghdad retains the right to oversee all Iraqi oil exports.
Disputes between Baghdad and Erbil on the matter, after years of independent oil exports to and via Turkey, have resulted in an international tribunal's ruling that the Kurdish government had to accept.
Iraqi oil minister Hayan Abdel-Ghani had arrived in the Turkish capital to discuss with his Turkish counterpart to finalise northern oil talks as Turkey's foreign minister visited Baghdad on Tuesday.
Talks between the two countries revolve around water supplies, oil exports to Turkey and the presence of Kurdish PKK fighters in Iraq. Turkey officially considers the Kurdistan Workers' Party, the PKK, a terrorist group.
Turkey’s Hakan Fidan's visit to Baghdad and Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region is a preparatory trip prefacing a visit by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, at a later unannounced date, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Since 1984, the PKK has waged an insurgency in Turkey. Ankara has long maintained dozens of military bases inside northern Iraq where it regularly launches operations against fighters from the group.
"We expect Iraq authorities to officially recognise the PKK as a terrorist organisation," Fidan said.
Talks lead to progress on water front, Iraq to resume oil exports to Turkey soon
The issue of water and dams on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, both of which have their sources in Turkey before entering Iraq, is a particularly sensitive topic for the two countries.
Fidan told a press conference after talks with Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein that Ankara approaches the issue "from a purely humanitarian perspective".
"We attach importance to the establishment of an uninterrupted dialogue mechanism based on cooperation in a scientific flow on water," Fidan said.
His Iraqi counterpart said Fidan had proposed creating a "permanent committee" to further discuss the water issue and resolve it, Reuters reported.
"We hope to find a solution," Hussein told the press conference.
Iraq has seen an alarming fall in the level of the two rivers and blames this reduction on dams upstream in Turkey, which is one of the issues tabled at the foreign and oil ministers’ meetings in Baghdad and Ankara.
