Ankara, Tuesday 28 July 2026. Iraq and Turkey had finished a day of talks and moved to the part where the cameras want a row of ministers signing folders. One folder went unsigned.
Erdoğan, noticing the count was short, asked whether there were not meant to be five agreements. He made a gesture with his hand, opening five fingers, and underscored it first in English, then in his limited Arabic.
‘Five! Khamsa! Hakan?’ He called Turkey’s foreign minister to the podium to explain. Fidan said something to Erdoğan, his back turned to the cameras. We do not know what.
Ali al-Zaidi, Iraq’s prime minister since May, turned to his transport minister, Wahb al-Hasni, and asked him in Arabic why he had not put his name to the document on the Development Road, the road-and-rail corridor meant to carry Gulf cargo from the port of Faw up through Iraq and into Turkey.
The transport minister responded inaudibly.
Zaidi asked, ‘Shu mus…
