Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi described the influx of Turkish troops and weaponry as “a serious breach of Iraqi sovereignty” and called for their immediate withdrawal.
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The Turkish intrusion into Iraq came shortly after questions were raised by countries like Russia, Iran as well as Iraq over Turkey’s true motives in the campaign against ISIS.
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said the deployment was a “routine rotation activity” and “reinforcement against security risks” in a pre-existing training camp.
The same demand was made by Khaled al-Obeidi, the Iraqi defense minister, who said that Turkey had to coordinate its actions with Iraq irrespective of its purposes.
Fresh deployment of some 150 new Turkish troops at a military camp located near Mosul has strained the ties between Turkey and Iraq with Baghdad asking Ankara to withdraw them immediately.
Earlier, Iraqi President Fuad Masoum said “a force from neighboring Turkey advanced deep inside the Iraqi territory in a violation for the norms and global law and to the Iraqi sovereignty”.
Turkish newspaper Hurriyet said that Ankara was “establishing a base in the Bashiqa region of Mosul with 600 soldiers”.
Mosul is the principal domain of the IS in northern Iraq, and the Iraqi army has been unable to regain control of it despite often promising the city’s inhabitants that it would “liberate them” from the jihadists. They have also received first-aid training.
Iraq’s accusation of Turkey being involved in the Islamic State oil trade comes on the heels of Russian Federation directly accusing Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of buying and selling oil from the extremist group.
According to the Turkish military, Peshmerga forces have received training in the use of heavy machine guns, mortars and artillery.
“The U.S. does not support military deployments inside Iraq absent the consent of the Iraqi government”, Brett McGurk, Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL, or Islamic State, said in a tweet Sunday. The IS captured Mosul in a surprise offensive in 2014 and since then the Iraqi city has remained the de facto capital of the Islamist group. “This is a part of that training”, one senior Turkish official said.
Turkey has battled with Kurdish rebels at home and in Iraq for decades but has developed a close partnership with the Kurdish Regional Government in northern Iraq.
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Ankara’s critics have repeatedly questioned Turkey’s commitment to the war against IS, accusing it of being more interested in attacking the rebel Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which it has repeatedly bombed in Iraq.
