Turkey today announced a military cooperation agreement with Iraq to set up joint command and training centers against the militants of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which Baghdad has decided to ban as a party.
“We will increase our cooperation to the highest level thanks to the joint command and training centers included in our agreement,” Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said after a closed-door meeting in Ankara with his Iraqi counterpart Fouad Hussein.
According to his ministry, “the establishment of a joint security coordination center is underway in Baghdad” and at the same time “a joint training and cooperation center is being formed in Basika”, near Mosul, in northern Iraq.
Fidan, who spoke to reporters alongside Hussein, hailed a “historic agreement” and pointed to “a growing Iraqi awareness of the PKK.”
For the Iraqi minister, “the presence of PKK elements in Qandil, Mahmour and Sinjar (northern Iraq) is a danger for the Kurdistan Region and for other Iraqi cities. It also threatens Iraqi society.” “The Iraqi government has also decided to add the PKK to the list of banned parties,” he continued.
He clarified that “the Basika camp will be transformed into an Iraqi training camp under the responsibility of the Iraqi armed forces” and that a “joint permanent committee will be established in Turkey.”
“The cooperation between Turkey and Iraq has reached a high level, this is a historic progress,” he insisted, stressing that the concept of “security” also covers the issues of water, trade, energy, transport and agriculture. mainly, while the use of the waters of the two great rivers of Mesopotamia, the Tigris and the Euphrates, which both originate in Turkey, is a source of recurring tensions between the two countries.
“We referred to the fight against terrorist organizations on both sides of our borders, against smuggling and illegal immigration,” he further clarified.
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