Turkey: No plans to pull out troops stationed in Iraq

Despite Turkey’s insistence that the troops were part of a training mission coordinated with Baghdad, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi gave Turkey an ultimatum late Sunday night: Turkey must withdraw its troops within 48 hours or else Iraq will bring the matter to the United Nations Security Council.

One protester, Hussein Habib, said: “If they don’t respond to our demands and withdraw their invading force – yes, the Turkish forces invaded – we will demand a boycott of Turkish goods and the cutting off of all political and economic relations”. The Iraqi parliament’s security and defense committee has summoned the Turkish ambassador to seek explanation over Turkey’s refusal to pull out the troops by the December 8 deadline set by Iraq.

The Arab population of Iraq’s Mosul are cooperating with Turkish forces to ensure that the city will be liberated from Islamic State (ISIL or Daesh in Arabic) by Sunni, and not Shia, militias, a representative of the Peshmerga, Iraqi Kurdish armed forces, told Sputnik on Tuesday.

KRG President Masoud Barzani has arrived in Ankara and met with various officials, including Turkish intelligence chief Hakan Fidan and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The region is part of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish entity known as Kurdistan.

“Our belief is that just as we operate in close coordination with and with the consent of Iraqi government that all countries should do that”, Power said.

“So when these threats increased… we sent some troops to protect the camp, not as an act of aggression but as an act of solidarity”.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Tuesday his government was considering retaliatory measures against Moscow, with whom it is embroiled in a bitter dispute over Ankara’s shooting down of a Russian warplane.

Iraq has strongly condemned the deployment, branding it as a blatant violation of its sovereignty.

He said the troop transfer had been halted in the light of Baghdad’s angry reaction but insisted those already deployed would stay.

The foreign ministry warned against non-essential travel to several provinces in Iraq including Basra, Najaf, Anbar and Kirkuk and said: “We strongly advise those whose stay is not essential to leave those provinces as soon as possible”. It cited increased threats to Turkish interests in the country.

“You can’t take Anbar back without the Sunnis and honestly you can’t get the Sunnis (on board) without an outside force like the US”, said a senior coalition diplomat in Baghdad.