Iraqi Grand Ayatollah slams Turkish military presence in Iraq

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has spoken by phone with his Iraqi counterpart Ibrahim al-Jaafari to discuss the “unlawful incursion” of Turkish troops in northern Iraq, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Saturday.

Abadi asked the U.N. Security Council to “shoulder its responsibilities” and order the withdrawal of the Turkish troops. “Armenpress” reports the aforementioned citing Sputnik International.

About 150 men with military vehicles, including tanks and armored vehicles, invaded Iraq and stayed in a base near Mosul, the capital of the northern province of Ninive, which is under the control of ISIL since June past year.

The deployment of Turkish troops dates back to 2002 and the additional troops were deployed in 2014 in response to a request from Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Abadi, Erdogan told a press conference.

“Iraq worked on containment of this issue by diplomatic means and bilateral talks, but these efforts did not succeed in convincing Turkey to withdraw its occupying forces from Iraqi territory”, al-Hakim wrote to Power.

On Friday evening, people converged on Tahrir (Liberation) Square in central Baghdad to condemn in the strongest terms the presence of Turkish troops in Iraq, calling Ankara’s move “a violation of Iraq’s sovereignty”.

In a stamen today, an Iraqi Foreign Ministry’s Spokesman said that his county reserves its legitimate right to take all necessary measures to put an end to the Turkish violations which prejudice relations of good neighbourliness, and endanger global security and peace.

Iraq on Friday circulated a letter among the members of the UN Security Council to express “growing alarm” that the problem was not being resolved. Ankara, for its part, insists that the troops are part of an global mission to train and equip Iraqi forces to fight the jihadi extremist group “Islamic State” (“IS”), which still holds large swathes of territory in Iraq.

“There are no any other military forces from any other country except Turkey on Iraqi soil”.

“Taking into account the Iraqi government’s sensitivity, the decision was taken to reorganize the military personnel in the protection force at the Bashiqa camp”, Davutoglu’s office said.