As of Sept. 30, American troops have withdrawn from Irbil, closing a chapter that began with the 2003 invasion of Iraq, 23 years ago.

The Patriot batteries that protected Irbil for years have been relocated to Jordan. But for Türkiye, the real question is not Washington’s departure; it is who will shape the landscape left behind. Baghdad itself demanded this vacuum. Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi rejected a proposal that would have allowed part of the coalition to remain in the country and tied the withdrawal deadline to a timetable for armed groups to surrender their weapons.

The calculation was simple: foreign troops would leave, the justification for “resistance” would disappear, and the state would reclaim its monopoly on arms. After all, the monopoly on the legitimate use of force is one of the defining attributes of statehood. American troops kept to the timetable. The weapons monopoly did not. Although some groups, including Asaib Ahl al-Haq, have announced that they are handing their weapons over to state authority, the most heavily armed factions continue to resist. Al-Zaidi has acknowledged that disarmament may not be completed until June 2027.

For Türkiye, the first warning sign lies precisely in this gap. Kataib Hezbollah, which refuses to disarm, has added the withdrawal of Turkish troops from northern Iraq and the dissolution of the Peshmerga to its new demands. Tehran’s objective, as we know, has never been simply to resist America. It has been to preserve an uninterrupted corridor of influence stretching from Baghdad to the Mediterranean.

But there is another side to the picture. With the American hand withdrawn, actors in northern Iraq are being left to deal directly with the local forces on the ground. For those who have treated foreign protection as an insurance policy for years, this means recalculating everything from scratch. There is no longer a guarantee from across the ocean, nor a pretext for resistance built around one. What remains are geography, neighborhood and agreements between states. The same applies to Irbil. The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) must now rely on the strength of its relations with Baghdad and Ankara rather than Washington’s role as guarantor, a principle it has long sought to preserve.

At the same time, we are at a critical juncture in the "terror-free Türkiye" process, and the momentum must be put to good use. The Iraq dimension of the process depends on coordination between Ankara, Baghdad and Irbil. Anyone who counted on the American presence as a balancing force, or even an escape route, must now confront the reality of this three-way equation. If no outside power is going to overturn the table, there is little alternative but to remain seated at it.

Whether this momentum endures, however, will depend on Baghdad’s capacity. A state that cannot establish a monopoly on arms within its own capital cannot be expected to honor its cross-border commitments in full. Ankara must therefore stop asking whether the American umbrella is still in place in northern Iraq and start asking whether the Iraqi state is capable of acting like a state at all.

In the Middle East, a vacuum never stays empty for long. It is filled either by the state or by those seeking to take its place. Türkiye’s red line begins precisely here: if northern Iraq becomes an arena of mutual opportunity rather than a power vacuum, the gains will belong not only to Baghdad or Irbil, but to the entire region.