Seven weeks after the 1973 transit treaty lapsed, Iraqi crude moves to Ceyhan without a deal
Erdogan’s decree terminating the Iraq–Turkey pipeline agreement took effect on 27 July. No replacement has been signed, and Zaidi’s Ankara visit produced five accords — none of them on oil.
The agreement governing Iraqi crude exports through Turkey dates to 27 August 1973. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan signed a decree terminating it and its related protocols effective 27 July 2026, published in Turkey’s Official Gazette and reported by Turkish Minute on 26 May. The accord duly expired without a replacement. On 28 July, Reuters reported — carried by Pipeline & Gas Journal — that Erdogan said Turkey aimed to sign a comprehensive energy cooperation deal with Iraq as soon as possible. Amwaj.media wrote on 12 August that Ankara had let the agreement lapse despite expectations that Zaidi’s visit the following day would produce a renewal; the two governments signed five accords covering education, youth and sport, industrial property and transportation, and nothing on the pipeline. Iraq had formed a committee in June to negotiate the successor text, according to AGBI.
The flow numbers are softer than the legal timeline. Exports to Ceyhan resumed on 27 September 2025 after a halt of roughly two and a half years. Kurdistan24 reported on 6 April 2026, citing an unnamed North Oil Company source, that Basra crude had begun moving through the Kurdistan Region’s network to Ceyhan for the first time, taking total exports on the route to 330,000 barrels a day. Interruptions are routine: Shafaq News recorded a one-day halt on 4 March attributed by another anonymous North Oil source to technical and operational issues. Hamza Jawahri, a former oil engineer at the state-owned Basra Oil Company, told AGBI in June that after recent regional developments Iraq “needs a good agreement with Turkey,” which he said could become a major outlet as the country relies more on pipelines.
Assessment: The interesting question is not when a new treaty is signed but what the oil is travelling under now. A lapsed transit agreement does not physically stop crude; it removes the arbitration architecture, the tariff basis and the legal cover for whoever is moving barrels, which shifts leverage decisively to Ankara. That is the same pattern as the lead: an obligation everyone discusses and nobody can point to on paper. Note also who is not in the picture. Baghdad is reportedly widening its partnership with Paris beyond energy, and reopening ground crossings with Iran — though both items reach us through single partisan or aggregated sources and should not be treated as confirmed. The hedging is real; the documentation is not yet there.