Türkiye's intelligence chief spent two days working the length of Iraq, and the sharpest stop came behind closed doors in Sulaymaniyah.
İbrahim Kalın, head of the National Intelligence Organization, known by its Turkish initials MİT, met Bafel Talabani, leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, on Wednesday. They discussed the "terror-free Türkiye" process, the effort that followed the disarmament of the PKK terrorist organization last year and the end of a 47-year campaign, and Talabani reaffirmed the PUK's support for it. Kalın also met the Kurdistan Regional Government's deputy prime minister, Qubad Talabani.
The day before, in Erbil, KRG president and KDP leader Massoud Barzani had received him. That gave the trip a careful balance: one call on the KDP in Erbil, another on the PUK in Sulaymaniyah, the two rival Kurdish parties that split control of the region.
The substance had started in Baghdad. President Nizar Amedi received Kalın at Baghdad Palace, where the two discussed tightening security and intelligence coordination. He met Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi the same day, along with National Security Advisor Basim al-Badri, who holds the PKK file in Iraq, Supreme Judicial Council President Faiq Zeydan, and the Sunni bloc leader Mohammed al-Halbousi. Türkiye's readout put the agenda plainly: strengthening security and intelligence cooperation between the two countries.
Then Kirkuk. Kalın toured the city's ancient citadel, visited a cemetery where Turkish soldiers are buried, and called at the headquarters of the Iraqi Turkmen Front. An analysis by Anadolu Ajansı's Bilgay Duman called it the first visit to Kirkuk by any MİT chief. The province is one of Iraq's most contested, oil-rich and ethnically mixed, and Türkiye has long presented itself as the protector of its Turkmen. That the provincial governor, Mohammed Saman Agha, also leads the Turkmen Front made him the natural host.
Intelligence sharing is the quiet engine of the relationship. For years the friction between Ankara and Baghdad ran through the presence of the PKK terrorist organization in northern Iraq and the Turkish operations that crossed the border after it. The two capitals now work the problem together, alongside a widening economic agenda that includes the Development Road, the planned rail and highway corridor meant to carry goods from the Gulf through Iraq to Türkiye and on to Europe.
The economic track traveled with the security one. A DEIK Türkiye-Iraq Business Council delegation met Iraq's trade and industry ministers and the head of its chambers of commerce federation, and in Ankara, Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar received an Iraqi delegation that included the deputy foreign minister and the deputy oil minister.
How far the process reaches inside Iraq is another question. Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan sketched the sequence in February: "After the Syria leg is done, there is the Iraq leg." The domestic track has clear results; the Iraq leg does not. Signs of PKK disarmament inside Iraq, around Sinjar, Qandil, Makhmour, and Sulaymaniyah, remain weak, Duman's analysis noted. Baghdad's own weakness compounds it: al-Zaidi's government formed roughly six months after the 11 November 2025 elections and began with ministries still unfilled.
Kalın has become Türkiye's busiest envoy without the title. As spymaster and former presidential spokesman, he is the figure Ankara sends when the message is meant to be delivered quietly and at the top, work that has included the intelligence channel between Ankara and Cairo on Gaza. This circuit closed days before the NATO summit Türkiye hosts in Ankara on 7 and 8 July. Al-Zaidi has said he will visit Türkiye after a trip to the United States, whose interest in Iraq is tilting from a military presence toward investment.