Middle East Monitor – Head of Turkish Intelligence Services Hakan Fidan has secretly visited Iraq on Thursday, Russia Today revealed, noting that he met with Iraqi political and government officials.
According to Al-Arab newspaper: “The head of Turkish intelligence, Hakan Fidan, made a secret visit to Baghdad, during which he met a number of Iraqi officials in conjunction with the start of the first round of dialogue between Iraq and the US, to develop relations between the two countries.”
Well-informed sources in Baghdad confirmed that Fidan’s visit to Baghdad had the intention of exploring the internal political atmosphere surrounding the Iraqi-US dialogue, whose first trips resulted in the US agreeing to reduce its military presence in Iraq.
The sources revealed: “Turkey is trying to exploit the relations that Fidan had with Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kazemi when he was head of the intelligence service in his country, to ensure its interests in Iraq, which is reorganising his economic priorities in partnership with the US.”
The sources disclosed that the Iraqi government did not announce the visit of the Turkish official to Baghdad, as it refused to grant Ankara any guarantees regarding the continuation of economic relations between the two countries, as Iraq imports billions of dollars of goods annually from Turkey, without exporting anything in return. In addition to this, Turkish companies obtain billions of dollars in annual contracts to carry out projects within different Iraqi sectors, without contributing to the Iraqi economy.
