Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan insisted on Thursday that Ankara will continue to fight Kurdish rebels based inside Iraq, after Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki demanded that it respect Iraqi sovereignty.
Their remarks came after a day of talks in Baghdad in which the two leaders pledged to ramp up bilateral trade and discussed the thorniest disputes between the neighbouring states.
"We (Turkey and Iraq) will continue to fight (the Kurdistan Workers' Party or PKK) and we confirmed our determination to eradicate this terrorism which threatens both our countries," Erdogan said at a joint news conference with Maliki, according to an Arabic translation of his comments.
Erdogan, who also met President Jalal Talabani, added that the two countries signed 48 memoranda, and called for trade between Iraq and Turkey to quadruple to 20 billion dollars annually.
However, Maliki voiced Baghdad's unhappiness about the infringement of its sovereignty implied by the Turkish parliament's decision earlier this month to renew for a third straight year its authorisation for cross-border military operations against the PKK.
"Nuri al-Maliki demanded respect for Iraq's sovereignty, and said nobody can violate it," government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said. "The government does not accept any incursion of foreign forces on its soil."
Since Turkish MPs first approved cross-border operations in 2007, the Turkish military has mounted a string of air raids against suspected PKK rear-bases, using intelligence supplied by the United States.
In February 2008, it even carried out a week-long ground incursion.
Turkish-Iraqi ties have gathered steam since they formed a joint committee with the United States last November to combat the PKK. It meets every two months to exchange intelligence and to coordinate security measures against the rebels.
Maliki also put forward Iraqi proposals to formalise the sharing of the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers which have their sources in Turkey but are vital for Iraqi farmers.
Erdogan said at the news conference that he had ordered the flow of water along the Euphrates, which originates in Turkey but flows into Syria and Iraq, to be increased to 550 cubic metres per second. One cubic metre is equivalent to 35.3 cubic feet.
Dabbagh, however, said the flow of water currently entering Iraq from Turkey was 440 m3/s. Syria said last month that it allows approximately 70 percent of Euphrates water to continue on to Iraq.
Both Iraq and Syria have often complained that Turkey monopolises the waters of the Euphrates and Tigris through a series of dams built on both rivers as part of a massive irrigation project.
Turkey argues that the dams allow for better management, ensuring a constant flow of water downstream unaffected by seasonal changes.
A delegation of eight Turkish ministers visited Syria on Tuesday as Ankara moved to cement a rapprochement with Damascus which began a decade ago when the regime cuts its ties with the PKK.
Syrian Defence Minister Ali Habib said the two countries would hold joint war games for the second time this year.
His announcement came after Ankara said it would exclude Israel from annual war games in central Turkey, angering its long-standing regional ally to whom it has been bound by a defence pact since 1996.
Erdogan told Al-Arabiya television on Wednesday that the decision had been motivated by "diplomatic sensitivities," an allusion to Turkish anger at Israel's devastating offensive against the Gaza Strip at the turn of the year.
On Thursday, he told Turkey's semi-official Anatolia news agency that he had to take account of domestic public opinion on Israel.
The Gaza war led to a sharp downturn in Turkey's relations with Israel and prompted the suspension of both Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and of Turkey's efforts to broker a resumption of peace talks between Syria and Israel.
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