THE GEOPOLITICAL POSITION OF NORTHERN IRAQI REGION AND ITS IMPACT ON THE RELATIONS WITH TURKEY

This paper is focused on an overview of Northern Iraq relations with Turkey, especially in terms of its geopolitical potentials, on those fields like geographical, political and economic challenges. It portrays and examines the main essence of relations between Turkey and Northern Iraq. It tries to answer the questions of how economic relations between Turkey and Northern Iraq affect each country. It explores the political, economic and geographical aspects which foster the relations between Turkey and Northern Iraq. It equally shows the energy aspect as the key instrument in building relations between Turkey and Northern Iraq. Northern Iraqi government begins to strengthen the relationship with all neighbors. It is due to the Northern Iraq's geographical position, especially its importance for tourists, so, a lot of people are interested in Northern Iraq, number of businessmen from the neighbor countries especially from Turkey come to Ibrahim Khalil custom. Northern Iraqi region is rich in terms of natural sources such as oil, gas and many minerals, so, this leads for having good relations between Turkey and Northern Iraq. ISIS fighting in Northern Iraq interrupts relations between Erbil and Baghdad and causes economic downfall in the region, but it has an impact on Turkey and Northern Iraq relations in exporting oil and in the near future exporting natural gas from Northern Iraq to Turkey and to the other countries. This thesis consists of four main sections. The first chapter, as an introductory chapter, is focused on main research question, sub-questions and characteristics and research technique of the paper. Second chapter deals with the impact of geography on the relations between Turkey and Northern Iraq. The third chapter informs about political position of the Northern Iraq and its impacts on the relations with Turkey and the referendum in North of Iraq. In the fourth chapter, energy reserves in the Northern Iraq and its impacts on the relations with Turkey will be analyzed. In the conclusion, various aspects of the Turkey-Northern Iraq relations are revealed.