Skip to footer

Iraq wants Turkish troops out of its territory

Turkish troops have been training Iraqis to fight ISIS. But now Iraqi leaders say Turkey is violating its sovereignty.

|
(AP Photo/Osama Sami)
Iraqi security forces take combat position at the front-line with Islamic State group militants as Iraqi Army and allied Sunni volunteer tribal fighters supported by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes are tightened the siege of Ramadi, the capital of Iraq's Anbar province, 70 miles (115 kilometers) west of Baghdad, Iraq, Monday, Nov. 30, 2015. Iraq's military command has told civilians in the Islamic State-held Ramadi to leave the city, a sign that an operation may soon be underway to retake the provincial capital.
  • By Qassim Abdul-Zahra Associated Press

| Baghdad

The presence of Turkish troops near the Islamic State-held city of Mosul in northern Iraq is a "violation" of international law, Iraq's president said Saturday.

President Fuad Masum called the move a "violation of international norms, laws and Iraq'snational sovereignty," and said it was contributing to increased tensions in the region.

Hakim al-Zamili, the head of parliament's security and defense committee, went a step further, calling on Iraq's prime minister to launch airstrikes against the Turkish troops if they remained in Iraqi territory.

What's unclear is why Iraqi leaders are making an issue of Turkish troops now. 

Turkey has said a military battalion equipped with armored vehicles has been in the Bashiqa region close to Mosul in the northern Ninevah province for the last five months as part of a training mission to help forces fighting the Islamic State group.  The force is called Hashid Watani (national mobilization), which is made up of mainly Sunni Arab former Iraqi police and volunteers from Mosul, reports Reuters.

A senior Kurdish military officer based north of Mosul told Reuters that additional Turkish trainers had arrived at a camp in the area overnight on Thursday escorted by a Turkish protection force.

Mosul fell to the extremists in June 2014 amid a stunning collapse of Iraqi security forces. Plans to try to retake Mosul last spring were sidelined as the extremist group advanced on other fronts.

The founder of the training camp outside Mosul, former Ninevah governor Atheel al-Nujaifi, told The Associated Press that the Turkish trainers were at his base at the request of Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and Defense Minister Khaled al-Obeidi. He said the Turkish forces are training but not arming Sunni fighters.

"They didn't give us any weapons even though we asked them to," he said. "We equipped this force from the black market with our own money and we believe they're the best force to liberate Mosul... These people will be very effective to hold ground because they are from there and there'll be no resistance to them from local people."

Sunni fighters in Ninevah and the western Anbar province say the Shiite-dominated government has failed to provide them with the support and weaponry needed to defeat the IS group. The government fears that arming Sunni tribes and militias could backfire. Sunni grievances were a key factor fueling the rise of the IS group, and many Sunnis initially welcomed the extremists as liberators.

The U.S.-led coalition launched 12 airstrikes on IS targets in Iraq on Friday, including two near Mosul targeting tactical units and fighting positions.

___

Associated Press writers Susannah George in Baghdad and Balint Szlanko in Irbil, Iraqcontributed to this report.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Iraq wants Turkish troops out of its territory
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2015/1205/Iraq-wants-Turkish-troops-out-of-its-territory
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe