Shelling of Kurdish tourist resort strains relations between Turkey and Iraq

Turkish shelling of a summer resort that killed nine Iraqi civilians and wounded more than 20 in the northern Kurdish region threatens to sour relations with Baghdad and Irbil. Both the Iraqi government and the Kurdish regional government strongly condemned the attack and blamed Turkish forces.

Ankara disavowed the strikes and accused unidentified “terrorists” while the UN mission for Iraq condemned the attack without mentioning Turkey and called for an investigation. The US state department said it was monitoring the situation.

At least four shells slammed into the riverside Barakh resort near the Turkish border in Dohuk province. Women and children formed the majority of victims who were from a 200-member group from Baghdad.

Iraqi prime minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi accused Turkey of “committing an explicit and blatant violation against Iraqi citizens”. He said Iraq rejected “security justifications [used] by any party to threaten [their] lives” and reserved “its full right to respond to these attacks”.

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Mr Kadhimi convened Iraq’s ministerial national security council which demanded that Turkey “submit an official apology and withdraw its military forces from all Iraqi lands”. The council called for a report on “repeated Turkish attacks on Iraqi sovereignty and security” and the submission of an official complaint to the UN Security Council.

Military operations

Iraq summoned Ankara’s ambassador to Baghdad over the attack and its state agency said the government would call back its charge d’affaires in Ankara.

The attack on the resort threatens the Kurdish region’s tourism revenues. Iraqi Arabs traditionally flee summer temperatures of 50 degrees plus into the cool Kurdish highlands.

If tourists do not feel safe, Turkish strikes could end this seasonal pilgrimage. Mr Kadhimi’s tough line could call into question Baghdad’s decades-old policy of tolerating Ankara’s military operations against Turkish secessionist Workers’ Party (PKK) guerrillas present in the region and the establishment of Turkish military bases inside northern Iraq.

Following the US occupation, Baghdad has been too weak to counter Turkey’s infringements of Iraqi sovereignty while both Ankara and Baghdad seek to dampen Iraqi-Kurdish aspirations for independence and deny Iraqi Kurds revenues claimed by Baghdad from the region’s natural gas resources.

[ Iran and Russia warn Turkey against military offensive against Syrian Kurdish forces in Syria ]

In the run-up to next year’s Turkish presidential election, incumbent Recep Tayyip Erdogan has not only stepped up domestic and Iraqi operations against the PKK but has also threatened to conduct a fourth invasion of northern Syria to expel from the border zone US-supported Syrian-Kurdish fighters who have ties to the PKK. Syria, Russia, Iran and the US have warned him against such a risky operation which could draw in forces from all four countries in defence of Syria.

Campaigns against Kurdish militants are popular with Turkish nationalists on whose support Erdogan could depend for re-election. According to MetroPoll’s June survey, his approval rating has fallen to 44.2 per cent due to Turkey’s economic meltdown and resentment against Syrian refugees he initially welcomed.