Iraq summons Turkish ambassador over troops near Mosul

The ministry said in a statement on December 5 that the Turkish troops entered Iraq without the knowledge of the Iraqi government and that their presence is considered “a hostile act”.

Ankara has acknowledged that it has sent 150 troops to the Mosul region on Friday to replace soldiers already helping in the conflict with ISIL.

On his Facebook page, al-Nujaifi stated on Saturday evening that the arrival of Turkish forces to Nineveh “came at the request of the Iraqi prime minister during a meeting with his Turkish counterpart, Ahmet Davutoglu”.

A Turkish security official said the troops had been in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq on a training mission since 2014.

Rather, it is a pre-existing “training facility established to support local volunteer forces’ fight against terrorism”, set up in coordination with the Iraqi defence ministry, he said.

The Peshmerga are one of the most effective Iraqi forces in the anti-IS fight, but coordination between them and the federal government in Baghdad has generally been poor.

Turkey is deploying almost 3000 military troops near Iraq’s Mosul in a bid to take part in the battle for Mosul against the radical group of Islamic State (ISIS) and help train anti-ISIS fighters, military sources reported on Saturday.

The head of the parliamentary block Badr Organization, Qasim Al-Araji demanded the processing for high treason to those who allowed the entry of the Kurds to the outskirts of Mosul, and said he was surprised by “this bad silence of those who spoke of the entry of several visitors without visa”.

The newspaper said that an agreement to do this was concluded early last month between Iraqi Kurdish regional president Massud Barzani and then Turkish foreign minister Feridun Sinirlioglu.

“I have sent a letter to Abadi and told him that Iraqi sovereignty must be respected, and we have weapons and F-16 planes and must use them to hit the Turkish military force in Mosul, so no one will dare violate the sovereignty of Iraq”, he said.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s office said foreign assistance is welcomed but need to have a proper approval from the government.

The United States was aware of the deployment but the move is not part of the U.S.-led coalition’s activities, according to defence officials in Washington.

On Thursday (3 December) Turkey began to deploy hundreds of troops to a base in Bashiqa region – dubbing it a routine training exercise – in order to retake the territories from the IS.