Kurdistan Region President to visit Turkey soon

ERBIL (K24) - Turkey's Foreign Minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Monday that the President of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, Masoud Barzani will visit Turkey on Wednesday.

In an interview with the Turkish Kanal 24 news television, Cavusoglu said that President Masoud Barzani's visit was initially planned to take place on December 4, but explained that the visit was postponed due to the crisis between the Iraqi and Turkish governments after the latter's deployment of hundreds of troops at a base in Nineveh province.

The Turkish foreign minister did not give details on who President Barzani is expected to meet or how long the visit will take.

The December 9 visit will be the first official visit to Turkey from President Masoud Barzani in 2015. Barzani's last visit to Turkey was in July 2014 when he met the former Turkish President Abdullah Gul and then-Prime Minister and current President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Barzani's Turkey visit comes a week after the Kurdish leader's meeting with top United Arab Emirates (UAE) officials in Abu Dhabi and the Saudi King, Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud in Riyadh. President Barzani also met the President of the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces (NCSROF) Khaled Khoja and Syrian-Kurdish National Council, Abdulbasit Seyda over the weekend in the Kurdistan Region's capital, Erbil.