The Washington Institute in an article by Soner Cagaptay and Tyler Evans wrote that Ankara has come to believe that Iran's regional clout is growing, and specially the Syrian and Iraqi governments and people are increasingly getting closer to Iran, which prevents Turkey from achieving its hegemonic objectives in this region.
This perspective has led Ankara to look for allies, including the Kurdistan regional government (KRG) in northern Iraq and Iraq's Sunni Arab population, the think tank said.
Moreover, Turkey and Iran are engaged in a commercial and political contest in Iraq since the 2011 US troop withdrawal, it said.
Turkey's ties with KRG in northern Iraq have reached a level unimaginable since a few years ago. From rapidly growing business and oil deals to numerous high-level diplomatic visits, Ankara is in the midst of an unprecedented rapprochement with the Iraqi Kurds, one that has come largely at the expense of the Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki government in Baghdad, the think tank said.
In addition, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) has stepped up its terrorist activities in Turkey, with more than 700 people killed by PKK-related violence over the past fourteen months.
Ankara has blamed the government of "Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for this threat" to justify its aggressive policies against Syria as an ally of Tehran, it said.
Meanwhile, these same developments have damaged Ankara's ties with Baghdad. The Iraqi government sees Turkey's direct dealings with Erbil as an affront to its authority, and Ankara's disdain for Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has only exacerbated the problem.
The KRG's energy wealth adds another potent ingredient to this mix. Turkey has traditionally viewed Baghdad as the sole interlocutor for energy deals with Iraq, in line with normal international procedures and its reading of the Iraqi constitution.
Indeed, these recent business maneuverings could foreshadow a tectonic shift in Turkey's posture toward Iraq. The rapidly shifting regional constellation wrought by the Arab revolutions and the US withdrawal from Iraq has battered Ankara's ties with Baghdad.
Turkey now faces a host of new challenges, from a resurgent PKK to the crisis in Syria and growing competition with Iran. In this disorderly environment, the KRG is syncing its policies with Ankara's. If this pattern persists, it could spur a rerouting of pipeline flows that matches the broader reorientation of Turkey's strategic relationships with Baghdad and Erbil, with significant implications for US policy.
mehr/281
Iran as a powerful neighbor of Turkey has blocked Ankara's bid to establish a hegemony over Iraq and Syria, a US think tank said.
News ID 183258
