A crisis between Turkey and Iraq was triggered over the weekend after a Turkish battalion, equipped with armored vehicles, was deployed near the city of Mosul in order to train Iraqi paramilitary groups against IS militants.
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Turkey has halted further deployment after Baghdad threatened to take the case to the UN Security Council.
In Karbala, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani admonished Turkey, saying it should not have sent “troops to the territory of another state under the pretext of supporting the fight against terrorism” and called on the Iraqi government to “protect the sovereignty of Iraq”. Do you (Iraq) have a force to ensure security of our troops providing training there?
The Turkish leader also said Ankara had deployed training soldiers to northern Iraq at the end of 2014 at request of the Iraqi prime minister.
Both Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu have ruled out withdrawing the troops.
“Daesh still controls around 35 percent of Iraqi territory”.
“The number of our soldiers will increase or reduce according to the number of peshmerga (Iraqi Kurdish forces) who are trained”.
“If Israel takes steps on this issue, we will of course take needed steps, but the implementation of the previously reached consensus on compensation and the finalization of the negotiations is particularly important”, Ibrahim Kalın said in a press conference in Ankara. “(Their) withdrawal is out of the question”, Erdogan said.
This statement came a day after Turkish Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Feridun Sinirlioğlu and the head of the National Intelligence Agency (MİT), Hakan Fidan, visited Bagdad to meet with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi.
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Our correspondent also said the recent downing of a Russian fighter jet over the Syrian-Turkish border played a part in Iraq’s move to expel Turkish troops.
