Turkey must pull all its forces out of a camp in northern Iraq, a spokesman for the Iraqi prime minister said on Tuesday after Turkey withdrew some troops from the area.
The deployment of around 150 Turkish troops to a camp near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul earlier this month has strained relations between Ankara and Baghdad, which protested to the United Nations.
Turkey said on Monday that some of its troops had begun leaving, but Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi's spokesman said it was not enough.
"The position of the government of Iraq is still the same: Turkey must pull out this force to the international borders and not reorganize its deployment," Saad al-Hadithi told Reuters.
Jabbar Yawar, secretary general of the Kurdish peshmerga forces that control the area where the Turkish forces have deployed said ten tanks had been moved from the camp to another existing Turkish base within the autonomous Kurdistan region.
Turkey says the troops are part of a mission to train Iraqi forces to fight Islamic State militants, but Baghdad denies having invited them and says its sovereignty has been violated.
"The reported withdrawal of Turkish military personnel and equipment out of camp Bashiqa that should be followed by additional steps and measures, opens the door towards moving past this incident", U.N. envoy to Iraq Jan Kubis said in a statement on Tuesday.
Poster Comment:
Sounds like some nice Tupolev fodder, and Russia can get some payback. And it would enrage McStain and his South Carolina Mini-Me to boot.
Sounds like some nice Tupolev fodder, and Russia can get some payback.
I'm surprised there has been no hostile action yet.
It will happen at some point if the Turks don't abandon their obvious attempt to invade Iraq and grab the oil of Kirkuk/Mosul away from the Kurds and for itself.
I think Vlad mobilizing his 150K soldiers to Syria/Iraq will change Turkey's (and NATO's) posture on Turkey's little attempted land/oil grab.
