Turkey withdraws some troops from camp in Iraq

Days ago, the Iraqi government asked from Ankara to withdraw its troops from Northern Iraq, as the Turkish government sent more military personnel and supplies in its Turkish military base at the Bashiqa region in Northern Iraq.

Turkey has had troops near the Islamic State-held city of Mosul in northern Iraq since a year ago, but the arrival of additional troops last week has sparked an uproar in the country.

“All that we have in this respect are the minutes of a session that took place in 1983”, said al-Jaafari, “which were later canceled by parliament in 2009”. Ankara subsequently halted further deployments.

“The entry of Turkish military assets into Iraqi territory without the prior understanding or consent of the Iraqi government canno be accepted or tolerated” the statement read.

The training mission has been in operation since March and is not assigned combat duties. Baghdad conveyed outrage over the Turkish incursion into Iraq without consultation and blamed Ankara for violating its sovereignty.

The tank battalion of the Turkish army is now stationed in Iraq’s Nineveh province to train militia there for fighting the IS terrorist group (aka ISIS, ISIL or Daesh).

“During a visit to Turkey in 2014, [Iraqi PM Haider] al-Abadi demanded [the dispatch of Turkish troops] for training”, Erdogan said Friday.

“We consider any military presence on Iraqi land as foreign aggression which we should stand against using all possible means”, Hadi al-Amiri, a Shi’ite lawmaker who heads the powerful armed Badr Organisation, told protesters in Baghdad.

Iraqi officials said they would involve the UN Security Council in an effort to get the Turkish troops to leave Iraq if they did not go on their own accord. “They [the Iraqi government] are aware of all of this”.