Turkey plans to use Kurdistan routes to trade with Gulf countries: Consul

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Turkey plans to improve trade ties with the Gulf States by using the Kurdistan Region as the route to export its products to those countries, said a Turkish envoy in Erbil recently, but also mentioned significant obstacles. A vote in Baghdad's parliament on Wednesday is likely to put such a plan on a fast track to becoming a reality.

“We as Turkey think of opening a new border crossing with the Kurdistan Region because there is so much pressure on Ibrahim Khalil International border gate,” Turkish Consul General in Erbil, Hakan Karacay, told Kurdistan 24.

The Kurdistan Region and Turkey have agreed to establish the additional international border gate not only to increase the capacity of goods which can cross from one to the other but also to improve both economic relations and tourism between them.

The Zete border crossing, as it will be known, will be the third official international crossing between the Kurdistan Region and its northern neighbor, and the first located on the border of Erbil Province and Turkey's mountainous province of Hakkari (Colemerg).

“But unfortunately, what prevents us from opening a new border crossing is that there are three domestic customs,” installed between the Kurdistan Region and Iraq, he previously said.

Following the tensions between Erbil and Baghdad as a result of the September 2017 independence referendum, the federal government of Iraq installed several customs points on the Kurdistan Region’s borders, including on roads between Erbil – Kirkuk, Sulaimani – Kirkuk, and Duhok – Mosul, to charge fees on products brought to the area from the Kurdish semi-autonomous region.

“So now, in addition to taxation on the border crossing, businessmen also pay taxes in the other three customs. This has become a big problem for us and it has resulted in an increase in prices of Turkish products,” Karacay added.

“This does not only affect our products in the Kurdistan Region and Iraq but also in the regional countries, because we [are] planning of making here [Kurdistan] a new beginning for Turkish trading ties with the other countries in the gulf.”

On Tuesday, a Kurdish official revealed that the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and the federal government of Iraq had inked a 28-point agreement to address controversial the customs checkpoints referred to by Karacay.

The very next day, the Iraqi parliament decided in a majority vote to remove the customs stations between the Kurdistan Region's borders with the Iraqi administrated areas in the provinces of Kirkuk and Nineveh.

Editing by John J. Catherine

(Additional reporting by Bilesa Shaweys)