Hakan Fidan, the head of Turkey’s National Intelligence Agency (MİT) met with Qubad Talabani, the deputy prime minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq, Rudaw Turkish reported on late Monday.
A delegation of Bafel Talabani-led Sulaymaniyah-based Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) accompanied Qubad Talabani at the meeting in Ankara, Rudaw said.
During the meeting, Fidan expressed Ankara’s concerns about the PUK’s relations with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), Rudaw reported, adding that Fidan told the PUK delegation that those relations would be have to be ended for a normalisation of ties between Ankara and Sulaymaniyah.
According to Rudaw, a separate meeting between a PUK delegation and Turkish MİT’s deputy head Mutlu Tuka was also held in Baghdad on Monday.
The meeting in Baghdad focused on reopening the Turkish airspace Ankara closed last week to flights to and from Sulaymaniyah, citing increased PKK activity and “infiltration” into the airport.
Both meetings took place after an explosion took place at Sulaymaniyah international airport on 7 April, for which the government in Baghdad demanded a formal apology from Ankara.
No officials of the Turkish government have so far commented on the incident, which, according to SDF, was caused by a Turkish drone attack. The SDF commander Mazloum Abdi as well as a number of US military personnel were present at the time of the blast at the airport.
The incident escalated tensions between the PUK, represented by Qubad Talabani in the KRG government in Erbil, and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), which has overall control of the same government.
“The behaviour of an authoritarian party regime in Sulaymaniyah led to the closure of Turkish airspace towards Sulaymaniyah International Airport and then this attack,” said KRG spokesperson Jotiar Adil after the incident.
In response, Qubad Talabani said that Adil spoke for the PUK’s rival the KDP, and could not speak for the whole government. “Targeting a civilian airport is not only breaching Iraq’s sovereignty, but it is also a dangerous escalation in the lives of the people of Kurdistan,” he said.
In an interview with A Haber on Monday, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said that control of both Sulaymaniyah and the PUK had been taken over by the PKK.
