Iraqi Kurdistan PM Masrour Barzani meets with Turkish officials in Ankara
ANKARA,— Iraqi Kurdistan Region Prime Minister Masrour Barzani arrived in Ankara on Thursday for talks with senior Turkish officials.
In his first trip abroad as PM, Barzani met with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu upon his arrival to Ankara.
Cavusoglu said in a joint press conference with Barzani that Iraq and the Kurdistan Region should abide by the international decisions in the terror case.
He added Turkish invasion into Syria “is not against the Kurds, but against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party [PKK] and the People’s Protection Units [YPG].”
On November 22, Turkey said that first group of Syrian Arab refugees has been resettled in Syrian Kurdistan from Turkey. Barzani said “any return of refugees to their country of origin must be voluntary.”
“The return of refugees that has to be on the basis of voluntary and safe return of those refugees to their homes,” Barzani added.
The Kurdish forces, local administration of Syrian Kurdistan and Human Rights Watch accuse Turkey of carrying out ethnic cleansing, executions, home confiscations and demographic change by forcing Kurds from their homes in order to make way for Arab Sunni refugees from other areas, including the ravaged Damascus suburb of Eastern Ghouta.
Human rights organisations in October 2019 accused Turkey of “forcibly” deporting refugees to war-torn Syria in the months leading up to its military incursion in the neighbouring country. Amnesty International said it spoke with refugees who said Turkish police had beaten or threatened them into signing documents stating that they were asking to return to Syria.
The Kurdistan Regional Government KRG has had to walk a fine line in the weeks since Turkey invaded Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava), the Kurdish region in northern Syria, which had been controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) the autonomous Kurdish administration’s de facto army.
Turkey is a vital economic partner for the Iraqi Kurdistan and Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party has close political ties with Ankara.
Barzani said the Kurdistan and Turkey “have a good and historic relationship”. The Kurdistan Region is against the PKK presence in Sinjar, he added.
“Security and bilateral trade were the focus of my meeting with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu today. We discussed our mutual interests and challenges, and ways we can work together to stabilise the region as a whole,” he tweeted.
The KRG premier will also meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the evening, according to the agency.
“Turkey was one of the countries that sent official invitations to the Prime Minister,” a KRG source said earlier on Thursday.
Barzani and Turkish officials will discuss bilateral relations and the important role of Iraqi Kurdistan in the region’s stability, according to the source.
(With files from nrttv.com | rudaw.net | Agencies)
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