Turkey has halted the deployment of troops to northern Iraq for now but will not withdraw those already there, Turkey’s Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday, after Baghdad demanded the withdrawal of soldiers sent near the IS-held city of Mosul.
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But Iraq’s Kurdish region, which has forces in the area, said that Turkey had sent military experts and supplies to expand the base.
“We expect them to remain”, the official told a group of foreign media representatives in Istanbul.
The Iraqi foreign minister said that the withdrawal was not for the Turkish advisers and trainers – who have been working for months to train Iraqis at camps in northern areas – but for the additional Turkish troops that were deployed recently without coordination with the Iraqi government.
“Our belief is that just as we operate in close coordination with and with the consent of Iraqi government that all countries should do that”, Power said.
Iraqi Defence Minister Khaled al-Obeidi said he told his Turkish counterpart the latest deployment had been made without informing or coordinating with Baghdad, and should be withdrawn.
Members of Iraq’s air force walk past a line of helicopters.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said on Monday that most of the oil produced in Islamic State-held territory in Iraq and Syria was being smuggled through Turkey.
“No further forces will be deployed to Bashiqa until concerns of the Iraqi government are overcome”, the letter said, the Reuters news agency said, citing sources at the prime minister’s office in Ankara.
A statement from his office said ” (Abadi) stressed on the importance to stop oil smuggling of IS terrorist gangs, of which its majority is smuggled through Turkey”, Xinhua reported. The increase in the number of our troops in Iraq is a routine rotation, undertaken under the threat of an Daesh attack. The deployment, however, may instead be worsening Turkish relations with Iraq.
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Iran and Russian Federation are open backers of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, while Turkey supports rebels seeking his overthrow and the United States has also called for him to leave power, but is more directly concerned with IS.
