The Turks moved a small contingent of troops into a camp near Mosul last week, ostensibly for the objective of training Iraqi and Kurdish forces.
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It was previously reported that Iraq will impose economic sanctions on Ankara in response to Turkey’s refusal to withdraw its tank battalion from Iraq’s Nineveh province.
On Dec. 11, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said that Defense Minister İsmet Yılmaz would shortly pay a visit to Baghdad upon a consensus reached with Iraqi Foreign Minister İbrahim al-Jaafari.
“We consider any military presence on Iraqi land as foreign aggression which we should stand against using all possible means”, Hadi Al Amiri, a lawmaker who heads the powerful armed Badr Organisation, told protesters in Baghdad.
“We’ll decide together whether to increase or decrease the number of Turkish troops there”, Çavuşoğlu said.
“Iraq has a Shia-led government and is backed by Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Russia…Turkey and Saudi Arabia accuse this axis of attempting to control and promote sectarianism and aid Syrian president Bashar al-Assad”.
He repeated Ankara’s claim that the troops were deployed upon a request from the Iraqi government, even as Baghdad has repeatedly said it did not make such a request.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Friday that Turkey has no plans to withdraw troops and would continue with the training process “in agreement” with Iraq.
“Taking into account the Iraqi government’s sensitivity, the decision was taken to reorganize the military personnel in the protection force at the Bashiqa camp”, Davutoglu’s office said.
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.
Top Iraqi officials reiterated their demand for a withdrawal during talks on Thursday with a Turkish delegation that included foreign ministry under secretary Feridun Sinirlioglu and intelligence chief Hakan Fidan, officials said.
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“Will we wait for an invitation from the Iraqi government to defend ourselves?” “We gave our neighbor Turkey a time limit to withdraw its troops and not to close the door to dialogue”.
