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In Turkish political circles, a popular joke holds that "the United States wanted Turkey and Iraq's Kurds to become friends, not to get married." As Turkish-Iraqi Kurdish cooperation in especially the hydrocarbons realm steadily deepens, observers increasingly ask if the relationship is an enduring one or fleeting.
An enduring strategic relationship, just like a solid marriage, is born of shared national interests, mutual respect and real interdependence. A fleeting cooperation, in contrast, stems from a temporary confluence of political interests, typically dependent on the personalities and preferences of leaders who may fall from power in the foreseeable future. Like a temporary marriage, such cooperation can fulfill pressing needs and preferences, but both parties know the arrangement will be discarded in short order. Have Ankara and Erbil become real strategic partners or will the relationship last only as long as Mr. Erdogan and Mr. Barzani remain the heads of their respective governments?
Those who argue that the relationship is dependent on the leaders currently in place often assume these people have a good personal relationship, which in turn sustains their government’s cooperation. I am not so sure Mr. Erdogan and Mr. Barzani like each other on a personal level at all, however. Not so long ago they traded recriminations and even threats, and Ankara would speak with Baghdad instead of Erbil when it needed something like cooperation against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). It was in 2007 that Massoud Barzani stated ““You [Turkey] do not talk to me in an official capacity. You do not accept me as a partner for talks. You do not maintain a dialogue with me. Then suddenly you want me to take action for you against the PKK? Is this a way to do things?” Although the relationship between the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and Turkey looks very different now, there appears little evidence that things improved because of a special, personal rapport between the two leaders or some of their top ministers.
So what changed? The first critical development occurred when Prime Minister Erdogan effectively eviscerated the “deep state” in Turkey – the unelected Kemalist elite in the military and elsewhere. It was the deep state that prevented any Turkish government – including that of Mr. Ozal in the late 1980s and early 1990s – from even saying the word “Kurdish,” much less embracing a Kurdish political entity anywhere. The mentality of the old style Kemalists saw anything Kurdish, whether in Turkey or in Alaska, as a threat and Ankara’s enemy. The final death knell of the deep state sounded in the summer of 2011, when all of Turkey’s top generals resigned.
With the deep state out of the way, leaders in Ankara who were more focused on Muslim identity than a mono-national Turkish identity found themselves free to embrace Iraqi Kurds. Their strategic reasons for doing so far outweigh any personal sympathies. First of all, Mr. Erdogan’s Justice and Develop Party (AKP) now looks like it is can retain enough votes to stay in power no matter what, so long as the economy remains reasonably good and it continues to appeal to both ethnic Turks and ethnic Kurds – something I examined in my column of April 3 (“The Teflon Prime Minister”). Appealing to ethnic Kurds becomes easier when the AKP is able to say “This government is anti-PKK, not anti-Kurdish – just look at our reforms and our great relationship with Presidents Barzani and Talabani!” If the new token Kurdish friend Ankara now takes to all its receptions and parties also helps it contain the PKK and PKK front groups in Syria, that’s an added reason to keep the friend close for a long time.
Keeping the economy afloat to keep winning elections is more complicated. A key part of the AKP’s economic strategy relies on energy imports for a hungry, fast-growing economy. They especially need gas for Turkey’s power plants, and what comes from existing pipelines from Russia and Iran is expensive and limited given current infrastructure. What’s more, Russia and Iran stand out as the real threats to Turkey and its interests in the region. Iraqi Kurdistan, on the other hand, lacks the power to seriously threaten Turkey and offers much cheaper oil and gas. Even if Turkey wanted to buy its oil and gas from Baghdad, the hydrocarbons would still have to pass through Kurdistan.
Leaders in Baghdad seem far too close to Russia, Iran and the Assad regime in any case. Especially with Turkey’s new assertive foreign policy role in a proxy regional Sunni-Shiite rivalry, the Sunni Iraqi Kurds stand out as a natural ally. These days, the KRG also looks like the only neighbor Turkey has zero problems with. None of these key strategic considerations appear likely to change for Turkey any time soon.
The KRG, meanwhile, needs an outlet for its oil and an alternative to dependency on Baghdad. KRG leaders are none too fond of the PKK and its anti-capitalist, far leftist outlook either. As a result, Turkish and KRG leaders do not have to like each other all that much. They will continue to need each other, which is what the most enduring political relationships (as well as a lot of long marriages) depend upon.
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