Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday said it was “out of the question for the moment” that Turkish troops would withdraw from Iraq, after Baghdad accused Ankara of sending them in without permission.
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Commenting on the United Nations Security Council’s failure to produce any statement on the incident as per Russia’s request, Erdogan said that Turkey “will follow the process” but “has chosen to cooperate with the worldwide coalition”.
The government of Erbil has always been friendly with Ankara, despite the Turkish government’s military and police campaign against Kurds in Turkey and nearby Syria.
The deployment of heavily armed Turkish troops in northern Iraq close to Mosul, which is occupied by Islamic State extremists, touched off the latest controversy.
On December 9, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said the Turkish soldiers were dispatched to northern Iraq after an increase in the threat to Turkish military trainers from Islamic State.
“We were asked by Prime Minister Abadi to help train soldiers and, at his request, we set up a training camp in Bashiqa in 2014”, Erdoğan was quoted as saying by Al Jazeera.
Abadi spoke to Jens Stoltenberg, NATO secretary-general, by telephone, the statement said, calling the deployment a violation of Iraq’s sovereignty. The officials will focus on the Kurdish issue in Turkey and attempts to seek peace with Kurdish militants in the country’s restive east demanding more political autonomy from Ankara.
Iraq’s Foreign Ministry later summoned Turkey’s ambassador to Baghdad and demanded that Turkey should immediately withdraw its forces from the northern Iraqi territories. The steps include turning to the UN Security Council and introducing economic sanctions against Turkey. “The reaction of Baghdad derives from the fact that these tanks and troops were deployed without taking into consideration the pro-forma diplomatic sensitivities”, he told Al Arabiya News.
Following Russia’s recently accusation that Erdogan had signed deals with Islamic State terrorists to buy oil, revealing satellite photos the Russian government claims show ISIS fuel trucks entering Turkey, the KRG clarified that the trucks belonged to Erbil and were engaged in legal trade.
“We just encourage both sides to resolve their differences here, whatever disagreements there may be”, Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said at a news briefing on Tuesday.
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“We have not yet escalated it to the Security Council”, he said.
