On Tuesday Turkey rejected the remarks of Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi who claimed that Turkey made a military "intervention" in Iraqi territory. Following the deployment of Turkish soldiers near the Iraqi city of Mosul, al-Arabi criticized what he called a Turkish "intervention."
"We understand that al-Arabi's remarks, concerning the Turkish military presence at a training camp in Iraq, was not subject to prior consultations with the Arab League, and as such they reflect his own personal views," Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Tanju Bilgiç said.
He added: "Therefore, these remarks, emanating from the aforementioned individual who had previously made similar inflammatory statements against Turkey have no weight or validity whatsoever." During his weekly address to the press on Tuesday, spokesman Bilgiç said Turkey will contribute "as much as possible" to Iraq's struggle against DAESH. He said: "Within this framework, we are respectful of the Iraqi government's territorial integrity and sovereignty."
Bilgiç said that the presence of Turkish soldiers in Mosul is not new and there is no retreating for now, but the deployment of new soldiers has stopped. These were the points that Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu told his Iraqi counterpart Hoshyar Zebari during a phone call, Bilgiç said, adding that Çavuşoğlu reiterated Ankara's respect for Iraq's territorial integrity.
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