21.06.2023
Masrour Barzani, the prime minister of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, was the first foreign leader to visit Turkey after the reelection of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in May.
Barzani tweeted that he had congratulated Erdogan on his reelection and that they had discussed advancing bilateral relations between the Kurdistan Region and Turkey and also the recent developments in Iraq and the region.
The meeting took place in the context of a deadlock over the exportation of Iraqi and KRG crude via a pipeline running to export terminals on Turkey’s Mediterranean shores.
Turkey halted Iraq’s 450,000 barrels per day of exports running through the northern pipeline on March 25 after the International Chamber of Commerce ordered Ankara to pay damages of $1.5 billion for allowing the KRG to sell its oil independently of Baghdad between 2014 and 2018. The Iraqi government launched the arbitration case on the grounds that the sales were illegal.
KRG badly need the income from oil in order to cover state employment wages in the Kurdistan Region.
