Turkey has halted deploying troops to northern Iraq but will not obey Iraq’s request to withdraw those already there, the foreign ministry said on Tuesday, insisting Iraq knew the went to help fight Islamic State. The two leaders had stressed the significance of cooperation to ensure stability in the region, according to Turkish presidency sources.
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Asked whether he raised the issue of the downed Russian warplane before the council, he said he did not because there was no direct connection, except that it is “another display of recklessness of the behavior of Turkey”. “We believe that Turkey has acted recklessly and inexplicably, carrying out additional deployments on the territory of Iraq without the consent of the Iraqi government”.
Last week, Turkey sent some 150 troops and 20 army tanks to the outskirts of Mosul, the capital of Nineveh province, which has been controlled by the group known as ISIS for more than a year.
There are some 3,500 USA troops in Iraq to train and advise local forces.
Baghdad accused Turkey of military invasion and demanded the Turkish troops to left the country.
Dr. Saban Kardas, president of Ankara-based ORSAM (the Middle East Strategic Research Center), told Al Arabiya News: “I don’t expect that Turkey would manipulate this particular military presence in order to take a new position against regional powers”.
“Our understanding of the original Turkish deployment is that it was negotiated with the Iraqi government”.
Davutoglu said he wanted to visit Baghdad soon to calm the row, saying the troops were meant to protect the training mission against attack by Islamic State. It threatened to refer the case to the Security Council unless Turkey withdraws its forces.
He said the situation around Turkey’s deployment of the military in Iraq is worrying “for several reasons”.
In a statement on the website of the Prime Minister, he said that his country must be ready to defend Iraq and its sovereignty and that the nation’s air force has the capacity and capability to protect its borders.
Turkish prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu has defended the deployment and said that, contrary to Baghdad’s assertions, “no one can say that this is a surprise”. It cited increased threats to Turkish interests in the country.
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Moscow has criticized the U.S.-led coalition for not seeking the permission of the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whom many Western and Gulf nations want ousted.
