Unity Between Turkey and Kurds Grows

According to Iraqi Crisis Report, Turkey and the Iraqi Kurds are engaging in a surreptitious, finance-driven rapprochement:

Gocalb Salshik, a Turkish engineer with Tapa Company, which is building the new 260 million US dollar University of Sulaimaniyah campus, welcomes greater cooperation, which he said would benefit business in Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan.

“We tried to import materials into the region through the Turkish border and have been denied several times because of the tensions between Turkey and Kurdistan region,” said Salshik.

“It is very important for us that Turkey and Kurds have the best relations [possible] because we can invest more in the region.”

Fareed Assasard, head of Kurdistan Strategic Studies Centre, a think-tank linked to the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, PUK, agreed….

“The Kurdistan region needs Turkey in order to get a foothold in the Middle East,” said Assasard. “Until now, many Turks and other Middle Eastern [countries] consider Kurdistan an alien entity that might damage the region” by breaking from Iraq, he added.