Turkey To Stop Sending Troops To Iraq After Baghdad Warning

But Turkey says the deployment is just to train local peshmerga forces, staffing an established base camp that’s been training Kurdish fighters to combat ISIS for more that two years.

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.

Reports said a Turkish training battalion equipped with armoured vehicles was deployed near the city of Mosul to provide training to Iraqi paramilitary groups against IS militants. “One battalion has crossed into the region”, the source said.

Iraq’s leadership have called the Turkish deployment a hostile act and a violation of global law.

“Iraq has the right to use all available options”, said a statement from Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi.

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

A much-anticipated counter-offensive by Iraqi forces to retake Mosul from ISIL has been repeatedly postponed because they are tied down in fighting elsewhere.

The Iraqi Foreign Ministry on Saturday summoned the Turkish ambassador to demand that Turkey withdraw its troops from Mosul.

“If we let Turkish forces get away with this and don’t do something then other forces will feel they can do the same – America, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Islamic countries”, said Hakim al-Zamili, the Head of Parliament’s Security and Defence Committee.

Major General Nureddin Herki, the commander of Kurdish peshmerga forces in the area, said the newly-arrived Turkish troops were part of a routine rotation in a training program accompanied by a protection force that has since returned to Turkey.

“Turkish support is crucial because it has helped cut Daesh’s supply lines and expedite the liberation of Mosul”, he added, stressing that the deployments “come within the context of Turkey’s participation in the global coalition [against Daesh]”. Turkey has in recent months been bombing Kurdish militant positions in northern Iraq.

During a meeting with Germany’s visiting foreign minister, Abadi stressed the “importance of stopping oil smuggling by (IS) terrorist gangs, the majority of which is smuggled via Turkey”, a statement from his office said.

Iraqi Kurdish regional president Massud Barzani sees the PKK, which is also a key player in the anti-jihadist effort, as a rival in the Kurdish world.

Turkish troops holding a military exercise.