Turkey insists its military presence in Iraq – and Syria – is to destroy terrorist elements like the Islamic State [Xinhua]
As the US military gears up to send more than 600 personnel to northern Iraq to assist in upcoming campaign to seize the city of Mosul from the Islamic State, Baghdad is waging a diplomatic war of its own with Ankara.
On Thursday, Iraq called on the UN Security Council to hold an emergency session to discuss Turkey’s military presence in the north in and around the Nineveh province.
Iraq and Turkey have for nearly a year squabbled about the deployment of some 2,000 Turkish troops in the north of the country. Baghdad says the deployment violates its territorial sovereignty while Ankara says the troops are there to combat terrorist elements that threaten its borders.
On Wednesday, the two countries summoned their respective ambassadors amid intensifying hostile rhetoric over northern Iraq.
A day earlier, the Iraqi parliament referred to the Turkish military presence as a hostile occupying force. The foreign ministry in Ankara strongly objected to that description.
Turkish deputy prime minister Numan Kurtulmu said that the Kurdish Regional Government in northern Iraq had requested Turkey’s mililtary help in fighting terrorist elements there.
Ankara says its military is helping train Kurdish fighters and Sunni militias who are expected to battle Islamic State forces in the campaign to liberate Mosul.
He said that Iraq was too “fragmented” and that no one had the right to object to Ankara’s presence in the north. He insisted the military would maintain its presence there.
He added that Turkey supported the Iraqi people’s fight against terrorism and at the same time respected the country’s territorial integrity and sovereignty.
The tension between Iraq and Turkey has also been exacerbated by fears of sectarianism in the liberation of Mosul.
According to Turkey’s daily Hurriyet newspaper, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan “warned of possible ‘sectarian’ results arising from the Mosul operation”.
Erdogan has said that the liberation of should not involve the pro-Iranian Shia milita Baghdad used in previous similar operations, but rather should be the responsibility of forces with ties to the city itself.
Last year, US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter was in Ankara to smooth similar tensions with Baghdad over Turkey’s military presence in the north.
Iraqi officials have since then accused Turkey of trying to carve out a foothold in northern Iraq under the guise of training Kurdish Autonomous region peshmerga troops against ISIL.
Turkey has in the past 20 years made numerous incursions into northern Iraq to pursue fighters of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), who say they are fighting to create a Kurdish homeland in southeastern Turkey.
Turkey, and several Western countries, have classified the PKK a terrorist organization.
But the Iraqi government says the Turkish military presence in Bahshiqa, just north of ISIL-occupied Mosul, has little to do with the PKK and more to do with carving out a Turkish entity in northern Iraq.
Turkey denies the charges.
The BRICS Post with inputs from Agencies
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