Video: Kurdistan’s Booming Economy

Video

Kurdistan's Booming Economy

Businesses are setting up in the flush Iraqi Kurdish region, reports The Times's Anthony Shadid, and keeping an eye on the south of the country.

By Stephen Farrell on Publish Date January 5, 2011.

In the Times, Anthony Shadid reports on the growing economic influence of Turkey in northern Iraq.

A Turkey as resurgent as at any time since its Ottoman glory is projecting influence through a turbulent Iraq, from the boomtowns of the north to the oil fields near southernmost Basra, in a show of power that illustrates its growing heft across an Arab world long suspicious of it.

Turkey’s influence is greater in northern Iraq and broader, though not deeper, than Iran’s in the rest of the country. While the United States invaded and occupied Iraq, losing more than 4,400 troops there, Turkey now exerts what may prove a more lasting legacy — so-called soft power, the assertion of influence through culture, education and business.

In this video, we visit one of the showcases of that Turkish penetration across the border into Iraq’s semi autonomous Kurdish region, at the glitziest shopping mall in the Kurdish enclave.