Turkey finds a gateway to Iraq

* username: rupertbu

In the lobby of the Erbil hotel that serves as the makeshift location of Turkey’s first diplomatic presence in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of Iraq, Aydin Selcen, the new consul, describes the warm reception he has received since arriving a few days earlier.

“I don’t think a diplomat could be happier,” he says, sipping tea. The installation last month of Mr Selcen, who previously served as deputy chief of mission in Baghdad, marks a high point of two years of rapprochement between the Kurdish Regional Government and Ankara.

Relations hit a low at the end of 2007, when Ankara mounted a military offensive inside KRG territory against the Kurdistan Workers party, known as the PKK, a militant group fighting for greater rights for Turkey’s Kurds.