Turkey stops troop deployments to Iraq

Baghdad has said Turkish forces are illegally deployed in Iraq and demanded their immediate removal.

Haider al-Abadi also said the presence of Turkish troops is a “serious breach of Iraqi sovereignty”.

He said the Turkish defence minister had explained the deployment as necessary to protect military advisers training Iraqi forces some 30 km (19 miles) northeast of Mosul in preparation for a campaign to retake the city.

Masoum called on Turkish authorities to “withdraw its forces from Iraqi territory and to prevent recurrence of such an incident, which harms the relations between the two neighboring countries”.

The peshmerga are one of the most effective Iraqi forces in the anti-Daesh fight, but coordination between them and the federal government in Baghdad has generally been poor. Erdogan refused to apologize for the plane’s downing, which Ankara said came after it flew for 17 seconds into Turkish airspace.

Turkey has also cultivated a close relationship with the Kurdish government and by most accounts, Turkey’s movement of troops into the Mosul area is only an expansion of its current presence in the autonomous Kurdish zone. “The discussion with the central government still continues”, the official told reporters.

Turkey’s Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, though, said the troops were there as part of an ongoing training mission at the request of Mosul’s governor and in coordination with Iraq’s defence ministry.

Moscow has accused Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and his family of benefiting from the illegal smuggling of oil from Islamic State-held territory in Syria and Iraq, a charge Ankara vehemently denies.

Last Tuesday, Iraq said that it did not need foreign troops to fight ISIS militants after the USA announced it would be sending special forces in Iraq to advise ground forces.

Baghdad, which is struggling to assert its sovereignty while receiving foreign assistance against the Islamic State jihadist group, said Turkish forces with tanks and artillery entered Iraq without its permission.

Video released on the website of Turkey’s pro-government Yeni Safak newspaper showed flatbed trucks carrying armoured vehicles along a road at night, describing them as a convoy accompanying the Turkish troops to Bashiqa.

Other sources confirmed today the death of a chief ISIL terrorist, known as Abu Aisha, during clashes with Shia units of the Popular Mobilization volunteers supported by the security forces and members of Sunni tribes in Fallujah, Al-Anbar province.