“Looking at the whole picture, I want to say that our recent visits to Baghdad and Erbil have been very successful and yielded more positive results than was originally expected. Iraq is our neighbor, with which Turkey has long-standing close social, cultural and historical relations,” Turan said.
According to Turan, the official visit of the Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim, ministers and deputies as part of the Turkish delegation for two days was carried out in close contact with the Iraqi authorities and that resulted in signing of several mutual agreements.
“We see that Iraq needs us and we need it. We need to build good relations with all the neighbors in the region,” the deputy chairman said.
He added that the only problem is the presence of some members of the PKK in some places in Iraq, mostly in Sinjar.
“We expressed our concern about this issue and in the course of negotiations reached a number of agreements allowing for the exit of the PKK members from the territory of Sinjar,” Turan said.
Talking about the decisions which were made regarding the fight against Daesh in the region, Turan said that the delegation visited the so called Mosul camp which was an important strategic point in fight against Daesh.
“Here Mr. Yildirim met with local commanders, who briefed him on progress of the fight against Daesh terrorists in the framework of the operation to liberate Mosul, with an exchange of views on this issue. With this in mind, we can say that the visit that took place will give a significant boost to fight against terrorism and the PKK. This is indicated by joint statements of the parties and by concrete steps that they took,” the deputy said.
He further said that in this connection, the recent visit of the prime minister to Iraq was as an attempt to correct these errors and is a positive step in terms of establishing Turkey's relations with its neighbors in the region.
Speaking about the issue of presence of the Turkish troops based in the Iraqi city of Ba`shiqah, Akcay said, “For me, the fundamental questions in this regard are the statements made by Mr. Prime Minister during his visit because they do not contain any mention of the withdrawal of Turkish troops from the Ba`shiqah base and I consider inappropriate to comment on speculative information that appears around the topic.”
Talking about how the IPA evaluates the negotiations in Astana on the Syrian settlement which will begin on the initiative of Turkey and Russia and the position of officials in Damascus, Akcay said that it is a negotiation process with the legitimate Syrian leadership, which cannot be neglected.
“Since Turkey is in favor of maintaining the territorial integrity of the Syrian state and is aware of how serious the of Syrian war is to Syria, Turkey, and the region in general there is no doubt about the need to maintain a dialogue and work out an agreement with the legitimate leadership of Syria which is recognized by the UN,” Akcay concluded.
Earlier, a leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), Murat Karayilan, promised to withdraw his troops from the Sinjar area in northern Iraq, saying that he will be continuing negotiations with the region's ruling Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP).
The PKK outlined the importance of national unity and stressed that it was in the Kurdish people's best interest to build that unity without wasting the "blood of the martyrs.”
The PKK leader added that the Kurdistan Workers Party and the KDP have been conducting ongoing negotiations on the subject of the former's presence in Sinjar and that PKK was ready to leave the area at the conclusion of the talks.
