Erdogan: "The govt will invest $11-12 BLN in southeast"

In an interview with the New York Times published yesterday, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that the government is planning a broad series of investments worth as much as $12 billion in Turkey's largely Kurdish southeast, in a new economic effort intended to create jobs and draw young men away from the terrorist PKK. "The state will invest between $11 billion and $12 billion over five years to build two large dams and a system of water canals, complete paved roads and remove land mines from the fields along the Syrian border," reported the Times. Plans for the project will be completed within two months, said Erdogan, at which point construction on the two dams will begin. He said he had dedicated one of his deputy prime ministers to visit cities across the southeast to work on it. Within a few months one TV channel of state broadcaster TRT will also include Kurdish, Persian and Arabic, Erdogan said. "We have relatives in northern Iraq," he added. "And people living there have relatives in our southeastern region. With whom will we have good relations other than with ourselves?" He also said a consulate would be opened in the southern Iraqi city of Basra in an effort to improve relations with Iraq.