Isolating Iran and Syria is a misguided strategy, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said during an opening speech at the World Economic Forum in Istanbul on October 30. “Dialogue between countries in the region is better than pressure from outside,” he said. Though his speech did not name the United States, his comments were considered to be aimed directly at American policy. He said that regional players could likely find solutions to Middle East peace and tensions in Iraq by working together and without external pressure.

 On the sidelines of the meeting, Ali al-Dabbagh, spokesman for Iraqi President Nuri al-Maliki told Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa) that the Iraqi administration remains confident that it can work out questions about the legal status of US forces in Iraq before year’s end. Al-Maliki “had a telephone conversation today that makes us feel very optimistic,” he said. Iraq and the US are locked in negotiations about the Status of Forces Agreement, which is needed to legalize the status of US forces in Iraq once the current United Nations mandate ends.

Iraqi officials have recently reopened some issues that US negotiators considered settled, such as the question of whether US troops will have to answer to Iraqi courts for crimes committed in the country. In other comments, Erdogan said history would look favourably on Turkey’s fight against rebel Kurdish groups, which has confounded US policy in Iraq as well. He added that Turkey’s foreign policy priorities are gaining membership in the European Union and extending its role as a regional conflict mediator.