ANKARA: Top officials from Türkiye and Iraq will hold talks on Thursday in Ankara for a high-level security meeting to address a common threat by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
The 4th meeting of the Türkiye-Iraq High-Level Security Mechanism seeks to reinforce the common understanding of security matters by taking concrete measures and boosting the legal framework to support joint efforts.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s April 22 visit to Iraq was a milestone in Ankara-Baghdad ties with the signing of the Strategic Framework Agreement (SFA).
The SFA formed the Joint Planning Group (JPG), co-chaired by their respective foreign ministers, and several Joint Permanent Committees (JPCs) to institutionalize and sustain cooperation.
During former Iraqi prime minister Adil Abdulmehdi’s visit to Türkiye in May 2019, Erdogan and Abdulmehdi agreed to strengthen the formal basis of military and security cooperation.
Talks on this matter were to be conducted by the foreign ministers, defence ministers, and intelligence chiefs of both nations, with the first meeting held in 2019.
However, the mechanism was halted because of Iraq’s internal issues and the Covid-19 pandemic but was revived after Turkish foreign minister Hakan Fidan visited Baghdad in August 2023.
The second meeting of the High-Level Security Mechanism was held in Ankara on December 19 2023. Foreign ministers of both countries chaired the session.
At the conclusion of the meeting, a joint statement was issued in which Iraq officially declared the PKK terror group as a “common threat” for the first time.
At the third meeting on March 14, 2024, Iraqi officials announced the National Security Council’s decision to declare the PKK a “banned organization” in Iraq. Ankara welcomed this decision in the joint statement issued later.
