The International and Political Journal

Iraq meets Turkey on a wide range of issues that make their relations close and strong, as they are not new relations, but rather have solid historical roots since the Ottoman era, to which Iraq was subjected for a long time until the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the division of its legacy in the hands of the colonial powers after the First World War 1914-1918 . The common cultural ties and the ethnic overlap that extends across the borders of the two countries, resulting from the presence of the Kurds and Turkmen, constitute an important factor added to the total economic, social and commercial factors that strategically linked the relations of the two countries and made separation and estrangement impossible. These relations have become more rooted with the escalation of economic ties between Turkey and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, due to the extensive investments made by Turkish companies throughout Iraq and in the Kurdistan Region in particular after 2003, as well as the escalation of the water crisis file that Iraq is suffering from its negative effects on Its agricultural reality is a result of the policy of building dams pursued by the Turkish government in the regions of southeastern Turkey since the mid-nineties of the last century, which began to reduce the level of water flows entering Iraq from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers that originate from Turkish lands, and the random increase of the population exacerbated Iraq's urgent need To these two rivers to irrigate agricultural lands and fill the general need for drinking and agricultural water, which often raised political problems and overlapping interests that confused Iraqi-Turkish relations, because of the problems that resulted from Iraq’s share as a result of the lack of water releases from the Turkish side.