Iraqi Vice President Hashemi meets with PM Erdogan

Turkey gave the fugitive Iraqi vice president Tariq al-Hashemi who has been in Turkey for a while a blank check by giving the message that he can stay in Turkey as long as he wants and his security and needs would be provided. Hashemi who met with Prime Minister Erdogan on April 18 in Istanbul came to Ankara yesterday and held private meetings first with Erdogan then with Foreign Minister Davutoglu at their residences. Hashemi has rejected claims that Turkey is meddling in Iraqi affairs, deeming Turkey's concerns reasonable because any development in Iraq will affect Turkey. "[Prime Minister] Recep Tayyip Erdogan has defined the current situation in Iraq as ominous. [Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki] should not have overreacted to that. It is only natural that Turkey be concerned over what is happening in Iraq. Developments in Iraq would certainly affect Turkey, either negatively or positively," said Hashemi on Tuesday, in remarks made in Yalova province, near Istanbul before moving to Ankara. The vice president warned that the existing political problems in Iraq may turn into an all-out sectarian war, saying that he supported criticism made by the Turkish government on the matter. "The Iraqi government should act as the government of all Iraqis without any ethnic, sectarian or religious discrimination. Iraq should be a representative democracy, as it states in its constitution. The current political practice in Iraq goes against the Iraqi constitution," Hashemi maintained. In response, Erdogan said a stable political system with all sects and ethnicities having equal voices is all that Turkey aspires for Iraq to have.