Baghdad continues to make controversial remarks with an increasingly threatening tone against Ankara on the Turkish military's presence in Mosul, which iterates that it is in the region simply to train locals in the fight against the DAESH terrorist organization.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said Tuesday that there were "only 24 hours left" of the 48 that Iraq gave Turkey to remove the tanks and soldiers it sent to a base near Mosul. Later on he visited the country's air force headquarters, saying: "We must be prepared and ready to defend Iraq and its sovereignty," according to his office.
"The Air Force has the capability... to protect Iraq and its borders from any threat it faces," the premier said.
Parallel to what al-Abadi said, Iraqi parliament's Chairman of Security and Defense Commission Hakim al-Zamili even claimed Tuesday that they can enter into war with Turkey, like they have done with DAESH. He said: "We are fighting against DAESH, we can fight against Turkey as well. That is quite normal."
A few hundred Turkish trainers have been present in Iraq for months, working to train Kurdish peshmerga fighters and Sunni militiamen. Their presence, while not publicly advertised, appears to have been done in coordination with both Baghdad and the semi-autonomous Kurdish Regional Government in Iraq's north.
One senior Iraqi lawmaker said Abadi's angry public reaction was a reflection of the pressure from Iran, one of Abadi's strongest allies.
"Let us be realistic," said the lawmaker, who requested his name be withheld so he could speak freely on the subject. "It is not Baghdad that's upset about the Turkish troops. Baghdad authorized those troops, there is another country that's now pulling the strings."
Iranian influence in Iraqi politics and in the country's security apparatus has significantly increased in the past 18 months.
Moreover, considering the legitimacy of Al-Hashd al-Shaabi's Popular Mobilization Forces, which was established in 2014 following a fatwa by Shiite cleric Ayatollah Ali Sistani for fighting DAESH, Iran's influence has become tangible in the country.
A report by the Ankara-based think tank Center for Middle Eastern Strategic Studies (ORSAM) on May 25 highlighted Iran's role in the establishment of the forces as indispensable and said, "Most factions other than the Shiites in the forces consider Iran's influence in Iraq as an 'invasion,'" adding the role of Qasim Suleimani, commander of the Quds Army of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps is also tangible.
