Turkey has halted a deployment of troops to northern Iraq, but will not obey Iraq’s request to withdraw those already there, the foreign ministry said on Tuesday, insisting they had been sent with Iraq’s knowledge to help fight ISIS.
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Turkey deployed hundreds of forces to a camp in the Bashiqa region of northern Iraq last week, calling it a routine rotation to train Iraqis to retake Mosul from Islamic State, which captured Iraq’s second-largest city in 2014.
Russian Federation had called the informal talks, which were presided over by the United States, which heads the rotating presidency of the 15-nation council in December and leads the global coalition fighting the Islamic State Group in Iraq and Syria.
“We believe Turkey has acted recklessly and inexplicably in carrying our additional deployments in Iraq without the consent of the Iraqi government”.
Until the Justice and Development Party (Turkish abbreviation AKP) of Erdogan and Davutoglu came to power, Ankara’s foreign policy was based on non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries, let alone working for regime change in other countries, the author says. Russian Federation criticized the Turkish deployment to Iraq on Tuesday, calling it illegal and inadmissible.
“Those who make different interpretations of the Turkish military presence in Mosul are involved in deliberate provocation”, he told the deputies.
9 that Turkey is “ready to work” withRussia to prevent a repeat of incidents similar to the November 24 downing of a Russianfighter jet by Turkey, while also accusing Russian Federation of “ethnic cleansing” of Turkmens in Syria’s Latakia.
“We want the secretariat to tell us what is happening in the region”, said Peter Iliichev, Russia’s representative to the UN Security Council.
“Our understanding of the original Turkish deployment is that it was negotiated with the Iraqi government. So I’m struggling to understand these criticisms”, a senior Turkish government official said Monday.
Though the Turkish government has significant problems with its own Kurdish population and the Kurds in Syria, it has a good relationship with the Kurds in Iraq, which it “has been using as a vehicle to oppose the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad”.
Aljazeera says that the Iraqi foreign ministry called the Turkish ambassador in Baghdad on the mat, complaining about the incursion.
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“They lasted about an hour and targeted three villages”, he said, adding that no PKK members were killed in the raid.
