Iraq’s politics made easy: Who is Turkey’s man in the new government?

Some update first:

Despite the con­fu­sion about the De-Baathfication Law reported by Aljazeera, It seems Maliki man­aged to attract Mut­laq his side, but he allied him­self with Maliki, as reported by Kuwaiti media today (image above)

A deal between Maliki and Salih Al-Mutlaq, to with­draw Mutlaq’s name from the De-Baathification Law allow­ing him to receive impor­tant gov­ern­ment office, in exchange that Mut­laq to leave Al-Iraqiya List (Izzat Al-Shahbandar, Maliki’s adviser is the one who orches­trated the new rela­tion between Maliki and Mutlaq).

Per­son­ally, I don’t think Mut­laq can leave Al-Iraqiya offi­cially, but we will see more coop­er­a­tion between him and Maliki in the future.

Who is Turkey’s man in the new government?

There is some kind of con­tra­dic­tion between the Turk­ish offi­cial state­ment and the Turk­ish media reac­tion on the for­ma­tion of the Iraqi government.

Here is the most cel­e­brated Turk­ish writer Cen­giz Can­dar:

Oglu’s mis­cal­cu­la­tions in Iraq, as he should tried to nom­i­nate a Sunni Arab Iraqi pres­i­dent, not a Sunni Kurd, and should work in order to pre­vent Maliki’s return as prime minister.

What Can­dar missed in his analy­sis is that Oglu worked for three months exam­in­ing all the Sunni lead­ers, ’till he found Osama Al-Nujaifi, who is a pan-Arab nation­al­ist, anti-Kurds, with his­tor­i­cal ties between his fam­ily and Mosul City.

Turkey (with a lit­tle help from Syria) imposed “Osama Nujaifi,” on the Kurds, acti­vat­ing his role as the third power in the Iraqi state (head of the par­lia­ment), who rep­re­sents Turkey’s inter­ests in Iraq. Al-Nujaifi’s first words in the Par­lia­ment open­ing session:

I am the head of the Par­lia­ment, I do not rep­re­sent the Iraqiya List.

Note

The New Yourk times “On His First Day, Iraq’s Par­lia­ment Speaker Was Tested by Own Alliance” should add that Al-Nujaifi (or Najafi as the news­pa­per calls him) walked out when the Par­lia­ment chose Tal­a­bani as President.

Barzani accepted Turkey’s man in Iraq (Nujaifi), because he was look­ing for a strong ally to pro­tect him against his rival Jalal Tal­a­bani who is sup­ported by Iran. At the same time, Barzani nom­i­nated (and insisted on) Tal­a­bani as the pres­i­dent of the state (for var­i­ous rea­sons) to sat­isfy Iran. With this Barzani made both coun­tries happy.

For Syria, the geo­graph­i­cal posi­tion of Mosul made Dam­as­cus a vul­ner­a­ble tar­get to any (future) U.S., Israeli attack. Syria was quick to close this gap through Al-Nujaifi.