The Turkey-Iraq situation is rather different since Iraq and Turkey are more than just a neighbours but major trading partners with Turkey buying a substantial part of its oil from Iraq, some of which acts as rent for pipeline and port facilities in Turkey through which Iraq ships oil to international markets (till the embargo resolution of the UN in 1990).
According to the Turkish National Pact adopted by the last Ottoman Parliament on 28 January 1920, the Mosul area (the towns of Mosul, Kirkuk, Suleymaniye and their surroundings), had to remain within the Turkish border. On 1 May 1920, Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk) declared that this would be the case in 1925, however Britain, bearing in mind the oil fields in the Mosul area and the strategic importance of Iraq, decided that the whole of the Mosul area was to remain in Iraq. Turkey did not participate in the Council of the League of Nations at which this decision was taken unanimously and was not in a position at that time to consider changing the fait accompli, which would have meant going against Britain, so, instead, she re-opened talks with Britain in 1926. In exchange for certain concessions, Turkey accepted the decision of the League of Nations, and signed the "Treaty between Turkey, the United Kingdom and Iraq concerning the
establishment of the border between Turkey and Iraq", thus putting an end to the dispute over this border (Lewis, 1991, 29). Since then, the two countries have been on fairly good terms although the Turks still say that the oil producing area of Mosul should have been allotted to them after World War I rather than being incorporated into the new Arab state of Iraq, then under British mandatory rule. Since the 1926 agreement, however, there has not been a single territorial dispute between these two states.
Indeed, Iraq and Turkey have another common interest: the suppression of Kurdish dissidents in their frontier areas, and this is the major factor which has led to cooperation between the two countries. Both states have been generally careful not to harbour or support the other side's opposition groups and when the Iraqi army was preoccupied with fighting Iran in the Gulf War, Iraq even granted the Turkish army the right of "hot pursuit" of Kurds across the border. After the closure of the port of Basra during the Gulf War, road and rail links across Anatolia and from Iskanderun, became Iraq's back door for supplies. What is more, new and enlarged pipelines carried Iraqi oil to the export terminal in Yumurtalik near Mersin and, in normal circumstances 60 per cent of Iraq's total oil output would flow across Turkey. Thus Iraq, heavily dependent on Turkey's good will, cannot strongly protest about that country's unilateral usurpation of the Euphrates water (MEI, 16 February, 1990,13).
Turkish-Iraqi relations made very rapid progress from the mid 1970s until the end of the 1980's on both the economic and political fronts and, after April 1982, Turkey became the major outlet for Iraqi oil. In 1977 a first pipeline was laid from Kirkuk in Iraq to Yumurtalik in Turkey and, by the end of 1984, the Kirkuk-Yumurtalik pipeline's capacity had been extended from 700,00 barrels per day to 1 million barrels per day. In 1985 Iraq and Turkey began building a second pipeline through Turkey which was completed by June 1987 increasing oil exports via Turkey from 1 million to 1.5 million barrels per day. Thus nearly half of Turkey's annual 20 million tonnes of oil imports comes from Iraq as well as 280 million dollars in royalties per year for the oil transported via these pipelines. Without the Turkish outlet, Iraqi oil exports would have come to a virtual standstill long ago (Irian, 1989, 51; Bolukbasi, 1990, 22).
Turkish-Iraqi cooperation reached its climax when both sides signed the security protocol in October 1984 whereby Iraq granted Turkey the right of "hot pursuit". The protocol allowed forces from either country to pursue "subversive groups in the territory of the other" up to a distance of five kilometres, thus Turkey could continue pursuing members of the PKK into Iraq and, in August 1986, Turkish planes first bombed camps set up by the terrorist organization on the Iraqi side of the border (Lewis, 1991, 70;
Turkey and Iraq have, however, faced several major problems over the last few years particularly Baghdad’s increasing concern over Turkey’s GAP project and the feeling that it was left out of the Damascus-Ankara agreement of July 1987 over the sharing of the Euphrates water during the building phase of the Ataturk Dam. During his Baghdad visit in April 1988, Ozal declared that the Turkish-Syrian agreement was a temporary one and that the real treaty would be reached through tripartite talks to be held by the three countries (Bolukbasi, 1990,39).
The failure of the respective governments to reach an agreement over oil prices has led to a drastic decline in trade between Iraq and Turkey. In 1989, Turkish exports to Iraq were reduced to one quarter of what they had been in 1987, and imports from Iraq (95 per cent of which were oil), were halved. Turkish exports to Iraq in 1988, when the trade volume was at its peak (986 million US dollars), had consisted mainly of live animals, poultry and eggs, cereals, chemicals, and iron and steel products (Erengul,
1990,15).
Following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait on 2 August 1990 and Turkey's compliance with the subsequent embargo resolution of the UN, the pipelines were closed, but the Kirkuk oil installations and the Iraq-Turkey pipeline survived the Gulf War undamaged
(Lewis, 1991, 69). The closing of the pipeline, introduced a problem of distrust in the
mutual relationship which will not be easy to overcome since, until recently, Turkey had conveyed the impression to Iraq that it viewed the pipeline as a commercial enterprise, protected from the uncertainties of politics. Turkey's closing of the pipeline has left the Iraqi government suspicious that the pipeline might be turned off whenever it suits Turkish economic or political interests.
The political cost of the Turkish action may be no less serious than the economic cost. It should be remembered that of all Turkey' s neighbours, Iraq - along with the former Soviet Union - is the country with which Turkey has the fewest problems. The Iraqi regime not only does not try to base its legitimacy on religion (being more secular than many other Middle Eastern countries) but, unlike the Islamic revolutionaries of Iran and the fundamentalist conservatives of Saudi Arabia, Iraq has no ideology to export to Turkey which might cause strains and stresses in the basically secular Turkish society. In addition Iraq and Turkey have no territorial claims against each other.