ANKARA: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hosted Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi on Thursday at the presidential palace.
The sudden visit of top Iraqi officials to Turkey led to speculation about the challenges ahead in the region that brought the two countries together.
Experts however drew attention to the shared security concerns between the two over the influence of autonomy-seeking Kurdish Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants as the main driver of this top-level meeting.
According to Samuel Ramani, a Middle East analyst at the University of Oxford, a key subject during the meeting will be Turkey’s cross-border raids on the PKK in Iraq, which Baghdad views as a violation of its sovereignty but Turkey claims they are essential for its national security.
“Turkish state-aligned media has emphasized that Turkey will frame itself as trying to help Iraq fight the PKK,” he told Arab News.
Turkey prioritizes wiping out the PKK from Sinjar province of Iraq as a critical move for securing “the future of Iraq” because the terror group is more and more using Sinjar as a new headquarters to be an alternative to the Qandil mountains in northern Iraq.
The Turkish military has been occasionally striking the hideouts of the PKK inside Iraq in parallel with its fight against PKK-affiliated Syrian Kurdish YPG forces to restrict Kurdish plans to control more territories in the region and prevent its own Kurdish population from being inspired by self-governance ambitions.
On Tuesday, Iraqi Kurdish peshmergas and PKK/YPG militants clashed when the latter tried to illegally enter Iraqi Kurdistan from Syria and attacked the local Peshmerga base with heavy weapons.
“The YPG cannot be allowed to exploit foreign assistance to launch attacks on our territory. Any repeat would be seriously damaging to the regional security,” Masrour Barzani, prime minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government, said in a statement.
Ramani thinks that the ongoing Syrian civil war will also top the bilateral agenda during the Iraqi premier’s visit to Ankara, as Iraq has aspirations for a bigger diplomatic role in the region.
Turkey however long criticized Iraq for giving shelter to the PKK especially during unilateral Turkish incursions into Iraqi Kurdistan have drawn anger from Baghdad and Iraqi Kurdistan’s regional government.
“As Turkey, we will give any support we can to fully clear the country from this terrorist organization,” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told a joint press conference with his Iraqi counterpart, Fuad Hussein.
The resumption of visa-free travel for Iraqis to Turkey has been also a key part of the negotiations.
“Iraq wants visa-free travel, while Turkey has been wary about the security situation since Daesh rose,” Ramani said.
The rise of Daesh led Turkish authorities to halt a visa-free regime with Iraq. Last month, 22 Daesh terror suspects, all Iraqi nationals, were arrested in Turkey.
“An agreement on visa-free travel would be a symbolic step toward a stronger Iraq-Turkey partnership, notwithstanding recent frustrations in Baghdad about the Turkish military conduct,” Ramani said.
Turkish and Iraqi foreign ministers have decided to form a committee to prepare a roadmap for the resumption of visa-free travel.
Against the high expectations of the Iraqi side, no mention was made about the signature of the much-awaited protocol regulating fair water-sharing between the two countries from the Tigris River as Iraq still suffers greatly from the scarcity of Tigris water – a three-decade-long bilateral disagreement.
Both sides are still negotiating the sharing of the Tigris river’s waters. Turkey also dispatched a special envoy to Baghdad last year for tackling water-sharing tensions with Iraq. The allocation of a monthly water quote to Iraq from the Tigris River is on the table.
On the other hand, the trade relationship between the two countries is almost unidirectional as Turkey still keeps the lion’s share in $15 billion worth of bilateral trade.
Turkey, Iraq draw closer over terror threat
https://arab.news/4a7wy
Turkey, Iraq draw closer over terror threat
- Experts drew attention to the shared security concerns between the two
Israeli rescuers say eight hurt in bus shooting
The attack occurred at an intersection close to the settlement of Ariel, the Israeli military said in a statement.
SALFIT, Palestinian Territories: A shooting at a bus near an Israeli settlement injured at least eight people on Friday in the occupied West Bank, an Israeli rescue service said.
Violence in the West Bank has surged since the start of the Gaza war sparked by Hamas’s attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023.
The Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s armed wing, claimed responsibility for the attack, which left more than a dozen bullet holes in the windshield of the bus.
The attack occurred at an intersection close to the settlement of Ariel, the Israeli military said in a statement.
It added that a “terrorist was neutralized on the spot.”
Four people suffered bullet wounds, three of them serious, and four others were lightly injured by shards of glass, according to the Magen David Adom rescue service.
Three of the injured were lying near the bus, conscious, when the rescuers arrived, a spokesman for MDA said, adding that those most seriously hurt were taken to hospital in a “stable condition.”
“In this operation, one of our heroic fighters ambushed a number of Israeli soldiers and settlers inside a bus,” Hamas’s armed wing said in a statement, identifying the attacker as 46-year-old Samer Hussein, from a village near Nablus.
At least 24 Israelis, including soldiers, have been killed in Palestinian attacks or during military operations in the West Bank since the Gaza war began, Israeli official figures show.
During the same period, at least 778 Palestinians have been killed in the territory by Israeli troops or settlers, according to an AFP count based on Palestinian official figures.
All of Israel’s settlements in the West Bank, occupied since 1967, are considered illegal under international law.
Israel extends Palestinian banks’ lifeline for one year
- Smotrich had threatened in May to cut the vital connection between Israel and Palestinian banks in the occupied West Bank
- Smotrich had told PM Benjamin Netanyahu that he “did not intend to extend” Israel’s annual guarantees to banks in the West Bank
JERUSALEM: Israel extended for one year a waiver allowing Israeli banks to work with Palestinian ones just days before it was due to expire, threatening to paralyze Palestinians financial institutions.
The extension was approved Thursday during a security cabinet meeting ahead of expiration of the waiver at the end of the month, a spokesman for far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich told AFP.
Smotrich had threatened in May to cut the vital connection between Israel and Palestinian banks in the occupied West Bank in retaliation for the recognition of the State of Palestine by three European countries.
Smotrich, who lives in a West Bank settlement and advocates for the full annexation of the territory occupied by Israel since 1967, had told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he “did not intend to extend” Israel’s annual guarantees to banks in the West Bank.
In exchange for trade-offs on the development of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, Smotrich later agreed to extend the guarantee, but only for a few months.
Since June 30, the waiver was renewed on several occasions for different lengths of time, the last of which was to last a month until November 30.
Until then, Smotrich had raised concerns over the financing of armed groups via Palestinian banks to justify the short extension renewals.
The Palestinian financial and banking system is dependent on the regular renewal of the Israeli waiver.
It protects Israeli banks from potential legal action relating to transactions with their Palestinian counterparts, for instance in relation to financing terror.
The waiver had previously been renewed annually, until Hamas’s unprecedented October 7, 2023 attack sparked the war in Gaza.
In July, G7 countries urged Israel to “take necessary action” to ensure the continuity of Palestinian financial systems.
It came after US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned that “to cut Palestinian banks from the Israeli counterparts would create a humanitarian crisis.”
The overwhelming majority of exchanges in the West Bank are in shekels, Israel’s national currency, because the Palestinian Authority does not have a central bank that would allow it to print its own currency.
Syria militants, allies shell Aleppo in shock offensive
- The violence has killed 242 people, according to a Syrian war monitor
- Militants cut highway linking Aleppo to capital Damascus on Thursday
BEIRUT: Militants and their Turkish-backed allies shelled Syria’s second city Aleppo on Friday, in a major offensive against government troops that has sparked some of the deadliest fighting the country has seen in years.
The violence has killed 242 people, according to a Syrian war monitor, most of them combatants on both sides but also including civilians, including 24 dead, most of them in Russian air strikes.
The offensive began at a sensitive time for Syria and the region, with a fragile ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel taking effect earlier this week in neighboring Lebanon.
Syria’s civil war began when President Bashar Assad’s forces cracked down in 2011 on pro-democracy protests.
Since then, it has killed more than 500,000 people, displaced millions and battered the country’s infrastructure and industry.
Over the years, the conflict has morphed into a complex war drawing in militants and foreign powers, including Assad allies Russia, Iran and Hezbollah.
While the army regained control over most of the territory that it lost earlier in the war, the area where the militants and their allies are based has been subject to a truce since 2020.
This week, militants and factions backed by Turkiye, which neighbors Syria and supported the anti-Assad rebellion, launched a major surprise offensive against government forces.
On Friday, they shelled a university student residence in government-held Aleppo, northern Syria’s main city, according to state media, which reported four civilian deaths in the latest attack.
By Friday, they had wrested more than 50 towns and villages in northern Syria, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the biggest advances that anti-government factions had made in years.
The fighters had on Thursday cut the highway linking Aleppo to Syria’s capital Damascus, according to the Britain-based Observatory.
“The highway has now been put out of service, after it was reopened by regime forces years ago,” said the monitor, which has a network of sources inside Syria.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said “more than 14,000 people — nearly half are children — have been displaced” by the violence.
At a press conference earlier this week, Mohamed Bashir of the militant Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) said: “This operation aims to repel the sources of fire of the criminal enemy from the frontlines.”
HTS, led by Al-Qaeda’s former Syria branch, controls swathes of the northwest Idlib region as well as small parts of neighboring Aleppo, Hama and Latakia provinces.
The Idlib region is subject to a ceasefire, repeatedly violated but which had largely been holding, brokered by Turkiye and Russia after a Syrian government offensive in March 2020.
An AFP correspondent based in rebel-held areas said there were intense exchanges of fire in an area just seven kilometers (four miles) from the city of Aleppo.
HTS has close ties with Turkish-backed factions, and analyst Nick Heras of the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy said the fighters were “trying to preempt the possibility of a Syrian military campaign in the region of Aleppo.”
According to Heras, the Syrian government and its key backer Russia had been preparing for such a campaign.
Russia intervened in Syria’s civil war in 2015, turning the momentum of the conflict in favor of the president, whose forces at the time had lost control of most of country.
Turkiye, Heras said, may be “sending a message to both Damascus and Moscow to back down from their military efforts in northwest Syria.”
Other interests are also at stake.
As well as Russia, Assad has been propped up by Iran and allied militant groups, including Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah.
Anti-government forces are, according to Heras, “in a better position to take and seize villages than Russian-backed Syrian government forces, while the Iranians are focused on Lebanon.”
A general in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards was killed in Syria on Thursday during the fighting, an Iranian news agency reported.
Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said the deadly offensive was “part of a plan by the diabolical regime (Israel) and the US” and called for “firm and coordinated action to prevent the spread of terrorism in the region.”
During its war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, Israel intensified its strikes on Iran-backed groups in Syria including Hezbollah.
Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Observatory, said Assad’s forces “were totally unprepared” for the attack.
“It is strange to see regime forces being dealt such big blows despite Russian air cover and early signs that HTS was going to launch this operation,” Abdel Rahman said.
“Were they depending on Hezbollah, which is now busy in Lebanon?”
Israeli tanks retreat from central Gaza camp, medics say 30 killed
- Some tanks remained active in the western area of the camp
- Freed Palestinians, detained during the war, have complained of ill-treatment and torture
CAIRO: Israeli military strikes killed at least 30 Palestinians overnight in the Gaza Strip, most of them in the Nuseirat camp at the center of the enclave, medics said on Friday after some tanks pulled back from an area they had raided.
Medics said they had recovered 19 bodies of Palestinians killed in the northern areas of Nuseirat, one of the enclave's eight long-standing refugee camps.
Some tanks remained active in the western area of the camp and the Palestinian Civil Emergency Service said teams were unable to respond to distress calls from residents trapped inside their houses.
The rest were killed in the northern and southern areas of the Gaza Strip, medics added. There was no fresh statement by the Israeli military on Friday, but on Thursday it said its forces were continuing to "strike terror targets as part of the operational activity in the Gaza Strip".
Meanwhile, the Israeli authorities released around 30 Palestinians whom it had detained during the ongoing offensive in Gaza in the past months. The released people arrived at a hospital in southern Gaza for medical checkups, medics said.
Freed Palestinians, detained during the war, have complained of ill-treatment and torture in Israeli detention after they were released. Israel denies torture.
Months of efforts to negotiate a ceasefire in Gaza have yielded scant progress, and negotiations are now on hold.
A ceasefire in the parallel conflict between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas, took effect before dawn on Wednesday, bringing a halt to hostilities that had escalated sharply in recent months and had overshadowed the Gaza conflict.
Israel's campaign in Gaza has killed nearly 44,200 people and displaced nearly all the enclave's population at least once, Gaza officials say. Vast swathes of the territory are in ruins.
The Hamas-led militants who attacked southern Israeli communities 13 months ago, triggering the war, killed some 1,200 people and captured more than 250 hostages, Israel has said.
France envoy urges Lebanon to pick president
- Jean-Yves Le Drian’s visit to Lebanon follows a fragile ceasefire to end the war between Israel and Hezbollah
- Lebanon has been without a president since Michel Aoun’s term ended in October 2022
BEIRUT: France’s special envoy on Friday said it was urgent for Lebanon to elect a president, after a parliamentary vote to end over two years without a head of state was announced for January.
Jean-Yves Le Drian’s visit to Lebanon follows a fragile ceasefire to end the war between Israel and Hezbollah.
“I came to Lebanon immediately after the ceasefire announcement to signal France’s support for its full implementation and to stress the urgent need, more than ever, to elect a president and restart the institutional process,” he said on Friday.
He said he was in support of Thursday’s announcement by Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri of a presidential election to be held on 9 January.
Lebanon has been without a president since Michel Aoun’s term ended in October 2022, with neither of the two main blocs – the Iran-backed Hezbollah and its opponents – having the majority required to elect one.
However, Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem said in a wartime speech that Hezbollah would “bring an effective contribution to the election of a president.”
Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati said on Wednesday he hoped the ceasefire agreement would mark “a new page for Lebanon,” calling for a swift presidential election.
Le Drian held talks with Lebanese officials and foreign diplomats from the United States, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt – countries working to address Lebanon’s presidential crisis.
The special envoy has visited Lebanon several times since being appointed to the position by French President Emmanuel Macron in June 2023.
