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Turkey’s Foreign Policy towards Iraq
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In that sense, all cautious steps taken by Turkey – particularly from the second half of
the 1990s onwards – towards Iraq were remarkable. Turkey supported the appeasement
of the economic embargo against Iraq to both compensate the economic losses Turkey
had suffered for many years and lessen the humanitarian impact in Iraq caused by the
embargo.7 Moreover, although Turkey supported the activities of UNSCOM, it did not
take part in Operation Desert Fox when the US bombarded Baghdad’s arms production
sites in December 1998. Turkey also made huge efforts to create political and economic
ties with Northern Iraq and its Kurdish leaders. The cooperation between Turkey and
Northern Iraq became so strong that Kurdish economic dependence on Turkey was
an undeniable fact in the mid 1990s and Turkey was defined as the “only gateway of
Northern Iraq to the outside world” by Kurdish leader Mesud Barzani in 1994.8 The
successive visits of Turkish delegations in Erbil, in the centre of Northern Iraq, and the
large amounts of humanitarian assistance provided by Turkish governments paved the
way for the emergence of a remarkable relationship between the two sides.
The core of the Turkish strategy was in fact to ensure Iraq’s territorial integrity
by demonstrating to the Kurdish leaders in the North that it would be much more
beneficial for them to have Turkey as an ally instead of an enemy. The message
transmitted from Turkey to the Kurds through these strategies was that Turkey would
be an ally of the Kurds as long as they did not seek independence and stayed within the
national boundaries of Iraq. In return, these inducements of economic cooperation and
humanitarian assistance on the part of Turkey were replaced by elements of deterrence
when a belief grew in Turkey that Northern Iraq had become a safe haven for PKK.
Turkey did not refrain from launching military operations in Northern Iraq during the
1990s in order to expel the PKK and did not hesitate to sign regional pacts with regional
states such as Syria, Iran and even Russia to deal with Kurdish separatist organizations.9
In that sense, it was undeniable that the Gulf crisis had posed a great challenge for
Turkey, which started to be involved in Iraq in the early 1990s. But this involvement was
based on a balanced strategy of synchronic use of inducements and deterrence towards
both Baghdad and Erbil, which was internalized by several coalition governments in
Turkey during the 1990s.
7 Apart from the economic losses Turkey suffered due to the embargo against Iraq, the fact that Iraqi
people were deprived of their basic needs was another reason for Turkish decision-makers to appease
the UN Security Council’s decision on the embargo. See, for example, the following reports on
the health and malnutrition problems of the Iraqi people: World Health Organization (1997). Press
Release WHO/16, 27 February 1997. Available in:
article/202/42509.html.
8 Kirisci K (1996). Turkey and the Kurdish safe haven in Northern Iraq. Journal of South Asian Studies and
Middle Eastern Studies. Vol. 19, No. 3, p. 31.
9 Olson R (1995). Kurdish question and Turkey’s foreign policy 1991-1995: from the Gulf War to
the incursion into Iraq. Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies . Vol. 19, No. 1, pp. 4,
9, 12.