Iraq Demands ‘Immediate’ Withdrawal of Turkish Forces from Its Territory

Turkish soldiers in the Mosul region were first sent there two-and-a-half years ago in order to train Iraqi peshmerga forces.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi had condemned Turkey’s movement of troops into northern Iraq near Mosul and demanded their immediate withdrawal.

Powerful Iraqi Shia armed groups have pledged to fight a planned deployment of USA forces to the country.

The Iraqi president also ordered the government and ministries, especially the Foreign Ministry to take the necessary measures to preserve the sovereignty and independence of Iraq and maintain good relations with Turkey, according to the document. “This is a part of that training”, a Turkish official told Reuters.

IS militants overran Mosul in June 2014.

A small number of Turkish trainers was already at the camp to train the Hashid Watani (national mobilisation), a force made up of mainly Sunni Arab former Iraqi police and volunteers from Mosul.

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 soldiers to Bashiqa, north of Mosul.

A senior officer from the Kurdish forces in the region – which are allied to Ankara – downplayed the deployment as a routine training rotation but a Turkish paper said it was part of deal to set up a permanent base.

Baghdad calls deployment an incursion but Turkey’s prime minister says part of a long-running training mission.

In a response on Sunday, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said the Bashiqa camp was a “training facility established to support local volunteer forces’ fight against terrorism”, AFP news agency reports.

Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga fighters prepare a rocket launcher as they guard a checkpoint during clashes against Islamic State (IS) jihadists near the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar, west of the city of MosulTurkey has other camps in Iraq, but they are inside the official borders of the autonomous Kurdish region, while the site near Mosul is in an area claimed by both Kurdistan and Baghdad.

The Turkish deployment was not part of the US-led efforts against the IS, officials in Washington said.

The United States also moved this week to beef up its special forces fighting IS in northern Iraq, and got rebuffed by the Baghdad government despite attempts to work out the arrangement ahead of time.

The presence of foreign troops in Iraq has been a recurring subject this week after the Pentagon announced sending 100 military to the Middle Eastern country, while Sen.

Turkey, however, later denied that it has expanded its military activities in northern Iraq after it deployed troops close to an area controlled by the Islamic State group.