Iraq demands withdrawal of additional Turkish troops

Turkish media reported that 600 Turkish soldiers backed by 25 tanks had been sent to the Bashiqa area near the city of Mosul, the jihadist group’s main hub in Iraq.

The deployment was part of a routine change of duty in a 2½-year training mission that has regularly seen small numbers of Turkish military personnel enter the country, the agency said.

The Iraq government has called on Turkey to “immediately” withdraw troops and artillery it has deployed on Iraqi sovereign territory without Baghdad’s consent.

“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.

President Fuad Masum called the move a “violation of worldwide norms, laws and Iraq’s national sovereignty”, and he said it was contributing to increased tensions in the region.

The Daesh militants overran Mosul, a city of more than one million people, in June 2014, but a much anticipated counter-offensive by Iraqi forces has been repeatedly postponed because they are involved in fighting elsewhere. It provides the sole route to market for the Kurdish oil industry, and trains Kurdish fighters as part of the worldwide coalition against Islamic State gunmen.

He said: “Al-Abadi asked for Turkish military assistance and Ankara responded by sending military supplies into Baghdad airport, like the Turkish troops sent to train our troops at Zlican Camp eight months earlier”.

Major General Karaman Kemal Onder who is responsible from operations in peshmerga forces said the training given by Turkish troops helped the Kurdish forces play a determining role in the liberation of Sinjar.

Turkey depends on outside suppliers for 90.5 percent of its oil and 98.5 percent of its natural gas, the president said.

Authorities from the Kurdistan region announced not long ago that the fresh troops are in Mosul to replace the current Turkish trainers. While Ankara supports Barzani’s Kurdish Regional Government, it considers the PKK, a group seeking autonomy for Kurds in Turkey, as well as its Syrian affiliates, as terrorist organizations.

The Islamic State group occupies swaths of Iraq and Syria, profiting from disunity among groups opposing it.