Turkey makes official request to open consulates in Iraq's Kirkuk, Najaf
Turkey’s Ambassador to Iraq has officially submitted a request to the federal government of Iraq to open Turkish consulates in the provinces of Kirkuk and Najaf.
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Turkey’s Ambassador to Iraq has officially submitted a request to the federal government of Iraq to open Turkish consulates in the provinces of Kirkuk and Najaf.
“Last week, we asked Iraqi authorities to open a Consulate-General in Kirkuk and Najaf,” Ambassador Fatih Yildiz said on his official Twitter account late Friday evening.
“I am convinced that the opening of these consulates will be a step [forward] to strengthen our relations,” he added. ”We await support from everyone who believes in our bilateral relations.”
Turkey currently maintains an embassy in Baghdad and a Consulate-General in Erbil, the capital of the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region.
Previously, the neighboring state also staffed consulates in Mosul and Basra that have been shuttered since the emergence of the Islamic State (IS) across Iraq in 2014. Turkey is planning to re-open the two consulates in the near future, the ambassador told the Turkish state-run Anadolu Agency on Friday.
He mentioned that, before opening the consulate in Kirkuk, Turkey will first establish an office to facilitate issuing visas to Iraqis there.
“Due to the presence of our Turkmen brothers, Kirkuk has blood and old ties with Turkey. It is a different city. Arabs, Kurds, and Christians of Kirkuk also have strong and historical ties with Turkey,” Yildiz added.
He noted that the new Turkish consulate in Kirkuk will represent Turkey’s cooperation in investment in the economy, infrastructure, and trade in the province.
The announcement comes three weeks after Yildiz visited the city and announced that his country would help rebuild a recently burned Ottoman-era market.
Since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the formation of the modern Turkish state in the early 1920s, Turkish officials have often implied that both Kirkuk and Mosul are its rightful Ottoman-era territories.
Oil-rich Kirkuk is one of the territories disputed between the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and the federal government of Iraq. It is an ethnically diverse province comprised of Turkmens, Arabs, Christians, and a Kurdish majority.
Editing by John J. Catherine