It only took an attack by the militants of DAESH to prove how justified Turkey was to bolster its forces in the township of Bashiqa near Mosul and how wrong the central Baghdad administration was to vocally protest this move.
DAESH launched an attack on Wednesday on the Bashiqa camp where Turkish instructors are training Iraqi security teams as well as the Kurdish peshmerga forces to effectively combat DAESH. Ten days ago, Turkey moved to increase its troops and tanks in Bashiqa as Turkish experts saw an imminent threat to our instructors. Turkey moved more tanks and soldiers into Bashiqa to add to the force that is protecting Turkish instructors.
The Iraqi government in Baghdad was up in arms, clearly provoked by Tehran, which is irked by the Turkish presence in the region. They claimed their country was being invaded, which was a load of nonsense. They protested over and over again, they set deadlines for Turkey to withdraw its forces and they threatened action at the United Nations. Turkey did not withdraw its forces but moved some of them away from Mosul and redeployed them deeper in the territory controlled by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).
Just after Turkey moved some of its troops out of Bashiqa, DAESH launched its massive attack on the camp, killing a peshmerga officer and wounding several other peshmerga soldiers along with four Turkish soldiers. DAESH used heavy arms as well as missiles in the attacks, and Turkey responded with its massive firepower, which silenced DAESH's weapons.
The attack should be a wakeup call for Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi if he does not want to make a fool of himself like his predecessor, Nouri al-Maliki. His administration is completely out of touch with the realities of the region and probably blinded by Tehran's Shiite expansionist designs.
Al-Abadi has to see that enlisting Shiite militia support from Iran will only lead to secession in his country. He has to promote a policy of reconciliation with the Sunni Arabs as well as the Kurds who have been alienated in recent times.
The fact that the central government is completely out of touch with the realities in Iraq, the fact that they have no effective Arab army to counter DAESH, the fact that they have willingly or reluctantly allowed their country to be used as a base by the PKK for terrorist attacks against Turkey and the fact that they cannot protect the Turkmens in Iraq give Turkey all the right to be involved in Iraq. No one can expect Turkey to allow Iraq to disintegrate and the ensuing instability to spill over to our territory. No one can expect us to sit idle as DAESH runs the show and eventually settles across our borders.
Turkey has been involved in Iraq with good intentions to help maintain Iraq's territorial integrity and unity. Turkey has always been constructive in its approach, which is appreciated by the Kurds of Iraq and by most Sunni Arabs. Can Mr. al-Abadi honestly say the same for the Iranians and the Russians? If the Iraqi prime minister has a bit of sense, he would try to enlist more Turkish help to bring order and stability to his country because he can depend on the fact that once Turks complete their mission they will go home. But can you say the same for the Iranians?
