Turkey’s ruling party has signalled it is ready to accept an independent Kurdish state in what is now northern Iraq, marking a historic shift by one of the heavyweight powers of the Middle East.
“In the past an independent Kurdish state was a reason for war [for Turkey] but no one has the right to say this now,” Huseyin Celik, spokesman for the ruling AK party, told the Financial Times…
“The Turks don’t want to encourage independence and caution against hasty moves, but if it happens they will live with it,” said one foreign diplomat, noting that Mr Kerry visited the Kurdish capital of Erbil this week to push the region to stay within Iraq. “As they see it, if it happens the Kurds will be in their sphere of influence and under their control.”
Turkey is a big foreign investor in the KRG, with the Turkish government taking direct stakes in Kurdish oil and gasfields it hopes will help meet its own rising energy demands. Ankara also controls the Kurds’ direct link to western markets – an oil pipeline to the Turkish port of Ceyhan.
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