But on Friday, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmed Davutoglu’s office said it had chose to reorganise its military personnel at Bashiqa following talks with Iraqi officials.
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“We at the Nineveh provincial council do not have any issues with having Turkish troops near Mosul because they are training the soldiers to be prepared for Mosul liberation offensive”, he explained.
Turkey has been running a training program since March in a training camp established in Bashiqa near Mosul to provide training to Iraqi volunteers as part of the fight against Daesh terrorist group.
Meanwhile, Russia on Monday said a summit between President Vladimir Putin and Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan pencilled in for December 15 had been cancelled, with ties between the two leaders in tatters over the downing of a Russian warplane.
Atheel al-Nujaifi, the former Mosul governor who established the Sunni militia camp where Turkish trainers and troops were stationed, confirmed that Turkey pulled out some troops.
Nevertheless, Iraq continues to insist on the “immediate” withdrawal of the latest deployment of Turkish troops which Baghdad views as “illegal” and a violation of Iraqi sovereignty and the UN Charter.
Pointing his pistol towards an image of Erdogan, Amjad Salim, a local commander in the Badr Organisation in Basra, said: “We are on high alert now awaiting orders from our commanders to set fire to the ground beneath the feet of Turkish soldiers”.
Turkish military sources say they are moving north.
It is unclear whether the withdrawn troops are returning to Turkey or will remain in Iraq. “No to Turkey!” Some young men burned Turkish flags.
Monday’s phone call was Biden’s second call to Davutoglu since last week.
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He subsequently said that an agreement had been reached on a “reorganisation” of the Turkish troops, but it was never made clear what form this would take.
