The reconstruction of Iraq and Turkey's difference

While Turkey's Operation Olive Branch in Syria continues at full speed, the vision Turkey has put forward regarding the aim of the operation is in fact a lesson and a warning for everyone making calculations about Syria.

Turkey most strongly supports and follows the understanding reached in Sochi with Russia and Iran. The two most important articles of this understanding are Syria's territorial integrity and leaving Syria to the Syrians. The policy the US has put forward on this is completely contrary to the understanding of these three countries. The US's plans regarding Syria lead to the partition of Syria, quite clearly.

Foreign intervention in the region in the name of fighting terrorism ends up, at the end of the day, leaving the whole region alone with a most violent environment of terror and its consequences. Truly, when occupying Iraq, the US had voiced a goal such as "bringing democracy" rather than fighting terrorism. In the end, from the democracy it brought and sowed, it is reaping a terror that drives the region into still greater instability. "Sowing democracy and reaping terror," then sowing again the fight against the terror that has arisen and reaping mass massacres and chaos: that is a summary of the US's adventure in the region.

Yet Turkey has no effort other than restoring order and stability to a region that has been demolished, devastated, and dragged into chaos in the name of fancy words such as "democracy" and "fighting terrorism." They destroy, Turkey rebuilds. With Operation Euphrates Shield, Turkey showed this mission in the clearest way. The liberated areas were rapidly reconstructed, and 150 thousand Syrians who had been forced to migrate from there were enabled to return to their homes. Those who returned home are coming back to life with the services Turkey offers.

In Afrin too, Turkey has no other aim or pursuit.

The conference titled "Reconstruction of Iraq," held in Kuwait last week, did not find much place on the agenda under the shadow of these events, but the summary of the meeting revealed a striking picture of precisely the Turkey difference.

In 2003 Iraq was occupied on the grounds of "possessing weapons of mass destruction," which later turned out to be a huge lie. Although the pretext for the occupation proved empty, the US did not refrain from displaying the most terrible and inhuman face of occupation in Iraq. In the end Iraq went through a period of destruction in which all its cities were demolished, more than a million people from every segment were killed, and the parties sowed rancor and enmity among one another. The US, primarily responsible for this occupation, when it began to withdraw from 2011 as Obama's election promise, left a devastated Iraq behind it.

As if that were not enough, the intervention undertaken in the name of fighting ISIS terror left behind the ruined Mosul and other liberated cities. Today there is agreement that Iraq, freed from ISIS and from occupation, needs to be rebuilt. But we also watch with wonder that those responsible for the destruction do not appear in the same eagerness to assume this responsibility of reconstruction.

At the meeting on the reconstruction of Iraq in Kuwait, Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, on behalf of Turkey, pledged a 5 billion dollar credit for the projects and investments that Turkish firms will undertake in Iraq in the period ahead. The manner in which this credit is to be used will, while securing Iraq's reconstruction, also bring dynamism to both the Turkish and Iraqi economies, and this will be a very important step for stability.

At the same meeting Kuwait pledged 2 billion, Saudi Arabia 1.5 billion, the UAE 500 million, and the US 3 billion. That the US, which spent hundreds of billions of dollars while destroying Iraq and of course recovered far more than these amounts by seizing Iraq's assets, set aside only 3 billion dollars in credit, again on a project basis, for the rebuilding of the Iraq it destroyed, may go down in the records as a scene to be remembered as a lesson.

KUWAIT'S SILK CITY AND ISLANDS PROJECT

Kuwait's hosting of the Reconstruction of Iraq meeting is in keeping with the reasonable, mediating role that Kuwait tries to play in the region. Kuwait, which was occupied by Iraq in 1990, is these days preparing for big vision projects in order to assume a much more central role in the region. A Silk City and Kuwait Islands Development Project, which was in fact voiced quite some time ago, has these days taken a place among the country's priority agenda items.

A budget of 500 billion dollars is being mentioned as the cost of the project, which is expected to turn Kuwait into an important cultural, trade, investment, technology, political, and living space for the region. The project, which includes a brand new city and the development of 9 islands, envisages a free trade and investment zone attached to Kuwait.

The construction of the project puts forth a very important vision of development and progress for the region. The Turkish construction sector has a very positive perception in Kuwait. The performance shown so far in the construction of the Kuwait airport leaves a very good impression and in itself constitutes an invitation to Turkish firms for the Silk City project. But as far as I can see, no one in Turkey is yet sufficiently interested in this project.

Yet Turkey must by all means show its interest in this project by rapidly bringing to life a railway project that would connect Turkey to Kuwait via Iraq.

In fact, such a railway project would be both the most important contribution Turkey could make to Iraq's reconstruction, and through this means Turkey would also provide an important path for more effectively integrating itself into the Gulf economy.