Barzani to visit Turkey amid Kurdish conference in Arbil

ANKARA - Hürriyet Daily News

Iraqi Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani. DHA file photo.

Iraqi Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani will pay a visit to Turkey on July 30 for two days of talks with Turkish leaders. 

Having arrived in Istanbul on July 29, Barzani is expected to meet Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu on July 30 and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan the next day. 

The visit comes shortly after a Kurdish conference that took place in Arbil in northern Iraq, attended by representatives from a number of Kurdish groups from neighboring countries including Turkey, Syria and Iran. 

Groups affiliated with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party’s (PKK), including the Democratic Union Party (PYD) in Syria, the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK) in Iran, and the Kurdistan Democratic Solution Party (PCDK) in Iraq, were among the participants in Arbil. 

The conference, as well as attempts by the PYD to establish an autonomous administration in the northern part of conflict-torn Syria, and the ongoing peace process of Turkey in which PKK members have been withdrawing from Turkish territory to the group’s base in northern Iraq, will be among the topics discussed in Barzani’s meetings with Davutoğlu and Erdoğan, a Turkish diplomat told the Hürriyet Daily News.