October 12, 2010

Turkey-KRG ties: How and why did they improve this much?

Abdulla Hawez Abdulla

I remember how relations between the Turkish government and northern Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) used to be. Both sides were ambivalent about how to deal with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), and had to wrangle over the matter. But these thoughts became obsolete after 2009 and transformed into marvelous relations. Some may wonder how and why they moved away from being enemies to being partners.

We should first mention that before this era of good relations between Turkey and the KRG, there was only one Turkish institution working in Arbil, the pro-Fethullah Gülen Fezalar Eğitim Kurumları (Fezalar Educational Institutes). But Fezalar stayed away from politics. Despite this, it has close ties with Justice and Development Party (AKP) ally the Kurdistan Islamic Union (KIU), and so Fezalar used KIU members to work with it.

‘Prophet Muhammad example of coexistence’

Ahmet Görçüm

Delivering the opening speech for the İstanbul symposium, co-organized by the Turkish “Yeni Ümit” (New Hope) and Arabic “Hira” journals, on Saturday, Grand Mufti of Egypt Ali Gomaa added that there are lessons people should draw from Muhammad’s life in regards to maintaining peace with adherents of different religions and non-believers. “The qualities of the societies he lived in or with did not matter for him as he always knew how to coexist. We have to draw lessons for own our lives by taking his words, state management and service into account,” Gomaa said.

The common message emphasized by speakers at the two-day Prophet’s Path Symposium over the weekend was that the Prophet Muhammad exemplified how to live peacefully with “the societal other,” and that there are lessons people should draw from his life to secure peace in today’s world.