Mottaki, who is due to attend an international conference on Iraq in İstanbul today, arrived in Ankara on Thursday evening for previously unscheduled talks with Turkish leaders. He met with President Abdullah Gül yesterday and held talks with his Turkish counterpart Ali Babacan on Thursday evening. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was also in Ankara yesterday to have crisis talks with Gül, Babacan and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
There was no statement issued after the meetings, but Turkish Foreign Ministry sources, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Ankara was not willing to accept any mediation role by Iran because Turkey already has open communication channels with Iraq.
Asked whether Iran could have a role in resolution of the crisis at a joint press conference with Rice, Babacan said Turkey and Iran, which is also facing attacks from a group linked to the PKK, have had discussions on the issue, but emphasized that it was up to the United States to help in the solution of the problem. “If we are to deal with the PKK problem, the US has a key role,” he said.
Later in the day, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Mohammed Reza Bageri, who was in İstanbul to attend the Iraq conference, said Turkey and Iran should work together on the PKK issue and added that their cooperation could include military efforts.
“Turkey and Iran must cooperate on the PKK issue,” Bageri was quoted as telling a group of reporters in İstanbul. Asked whether cooperation should include military efforts, Bageri said: “All kind of cooperation is possible.”
Mottaki came to Ankara after visits to Syria and Iraq, where he called for a peaceful solution to a crisis stemming from the PKK presence in Iraq’s Kurdish-run northern Iraq. Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said in a statement after meeting Mottaki on Wednesday in Baghdad that he urged Tehran to help defuse the crisis with Turkey and called for Iran’s support at the Saturday conference on Iraq this week.
Speaking after talks with Mottaki, Kurdish Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari announced Iraqi authorities have set up more checkpoints to restrict the movement of members of the PKK and cut supply lines to their mountain hideouts.
Foreign Ministry sources said ahead of Mottaki’s talks in Ankara that the Iranian minister would “share his impressions on the Baghdad visit” in meetings with Turkish leaders. In a brief statement upon his arrival, Mottaki said his visit was aimed at continuing “consultations” on Iraq ahead of the Iraq conference in İstanbul.
“We had agreed (with Babacan) during his visit to Tehran last month to pursue our consultations in Ankara on Thursday and Friday, ahead of the İstanbul meeting,” he told reporters.
Ralston: US pushing Turkey, Iran
Mottaki’s Ankara visit and Bageri’s call for cooperation came after Joseph Ralston, US President George W. Bush’s former special envoy for countering the PKK, said Washington was pushing Turkey and Iran together by failing to crack down on the PKK bases in northern Iraq.
Ralston told McClatchy newspapers in an interview out yesterday that the US is “driving, strategically, the Turks and the Iranians together” due to their common concern about Kurdish terrorists. Turkey is battling the PKK while Iran is also fighting against a group linked to the PKK, PJAK (Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan).
Comments from US military commanders that they have no plans to halt PKK activities in northern Iraq run “directly opposite” to promises Bush has made to Turkey, said Ralston, a former NATO supreme commander who quit his job with the Bush administration after about a year in early October.
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