Arbil/Ankara: Iraq has urged United Nations Security Council permanent members and “friendly nations” to mobilise support for a resolution to condemn Turkey’s troop deployment in northern Iraq, which it said violated Iraq’s sovereignty.
Iraq has also asked the Arab League to hold an extraordinary meeting of Arab foreign ministers to consider “the escalation of the Turkish violation and adopt an Arab attitude against it,” Ahmad Jamal, a spokesman for the Iraqi foreign ministry, said in a statement posted on the ministry’s website on Thursday.
The Iraqi government has also ordered the closure of the country’s commercial office in Istanbul, according to Hashem Hatem, director of foreign economic relations at the Ministry of Trade. Authorities may take “tougher steps,” including cutting trade ties with Turkey, he said. Total trade between the two country amounts to about $11 billion a year, he said by phone.
The closure of the Istanbul office is a “message to Turkey,” Hatem said. “If Turkey maintains its position, what would be the benefit of trade with Iraq’s sovereignty breached?”
Turkey denies violating Iraq’s territorial unity and says it sent troops last week to Bashiqa camp, northeast of Mosul, only to expand the training of Iraqi militias fighting Daesh. Turkey has no plan to withdraw its soldiers stationed in the country, though there will be no further deployments, Turkish Foreign Ministry Spokesman Tanju Bilgic said on Tuesday.
Turkey’s deployment added to a wider arms buildup in the region as the military intervention against Daesh in Syria and Iraq intensifies. Russia and Nato have deployed more warplanes and warships since Turkish aircraft shot down a Russian fighter jet last month. In Iraq, the US-backed government’s struggles against Daesh leave the second-largest oil producer in the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries vulnerable to break up along ethnic and sectarian lines.
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Turkish Foreign Minister Feridun Sinirlioglu and head of Turkey’s intelligence agency, Hakan Fidan, were scheduled to travel to Baghdad on Thursday to discuss last week’s deployment.
The first leaders of the Turkish republic, founded in 1923, sought to include oil-rich Kirkuk and Mosul in northern Iraq within its borders. Turkey abandoned its claim to the territory in 1926, yet it has continued to seek influence there.
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in an interview aired on Wednesday that Turkish troops had been stationed at a military base in northern Iraq at the request of Iraq’s leader since 2014, but Iraq had not made it an issue until this week,
“We were asked by Prime Minister [Haider] Al Abadi to help train soldiers and, at his request, we set up a training camp in Bashiqa in 2014,” Erdogan was quoted as saying by Al Jazeera.
Erdogan said Al Abadi “did not say a word until just now” because of developments in the region.
On Saturday, Iraq’s Foreign Ministry summoned the Turkish ambassador to demand that Turkey immediately withdraw hundreds of troops deployed in recent days to northern Iraq, near the Daesh-controlled city of Mosul.
The Iraqi ministry said in a statement the Turkish forces had entered Iraqi territory without the knowledge of the central government in Baghdad, and that Iraq considered such presence “a hostile act”.
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Wednesday that the Turkish soldiers were dispatched to Iraq after a threat from Daesh militants to Turkish military trainers in the area increased and the deployment was an act of solidarity, not aggression.
“These trainers in Bashiqa camp were threatened by Daesh because it is 15-20km from Mosul and they have only light arms,” he told a group of foreign journalists in Istanbul.
Davutoglu said the training would continue, and was part of a long-term process of strengthening Kurdish Peshmerga fighters that was begun after Mosul fell to Daesh. The camps had trained more than 3,000 Mosul residents to form a national guard unit, he said; troops had been sent to protect the trainers.
“If there was an Iraqi army in Mosul, there wouldn’t be any need for Turkish presence,” Davutoglu said.
“The challenge of Daesh is not an Iraqi challenge or a Syrian challenge - it is a challenge to all of us,” he added. The move “was an act of solidarity”.
Erdogan told Al Jazeera that the Turkish troops stationed at the camp were mostly trainers. The Turkish leader also blamed the policies of Iraq and Iran for the rise of sectarianism in the war in neighbouring Syria.
Davutoglu meanwhile said Russia’s continued bombing in northwestern Syria constitutes the “ethnic cleansing” of the local Turkmen population, pouring fresh fuel on a dispute that has simmered between Moscow and Ankara since Turkey shot down a Russian plane in the same border region two weeks ago.
He said Russia’s decision to concentrate its air campaign on areas of Syria where moderate opposition groups have so far staved off Daesh only served to strengthen the Islamist group.
“Russia is trying to make [an]) ethnic cleansing in Northern Latakia to force [out] all Turkmen and Sunni populations who do not have good relations with the [Syrian] regime. They want to expel [them], they want to ethnically cleanse this area,” Davutolgu said, adding: “Their fight is not against [Daesh].”
- with inputs from Financial Times and Reuters
