National Intelligence Organization President (MİT) Hakan Fidan and Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Feridun Sinirlioğlu emphasized Turkey's respect for the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Iraq during their visit to Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi in Baghdad on Thursday.
However, a day after the meeting Abadi instructed the Iraqi Foreign Ministry to lodge a formal complaint at the U.N. Security Council (UNSC) over the presence of Turkish troops in the north of the country. Abadi's move came hours after Iraq's top Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, criticized the deployment of Turkish troops and tanks to Mosul. On Dec. 8, Turkey deployed approximately 150 troops to replace its forces stationed in Northern Iraq as part of a training program for Kurdish peshmerga fighters.
The program has provided training for more than 2,500 peshmerga soldiers and officers battling DAESH, according to the Turkish military.
Iraq's letter to the presidency of the UN Security Council demanding that Turkey withdraw its troops from northern Iraq reached on Friday as Samantha Power, U.S. Ambassador to the UN who heads the 15-member council in December, confirmed to reporters that she had received the letter from Iraq's Ambassador Mohamed Ali Alhakim.
In the letter, whose Arabic original was seen by Anadolu Agency, Iraq calls the presence of Turkish elements in northern Iraq a violation of the UN Charter and Iraq's sovereignty, urging the Security Council to demand that Turkey immediately remove its forces. According to the letter, Turkey deployed the troops "without any consultation or coordination with the federal government of Iraq".
Power told reporters following a council meeting on Burundi that any troop deployments in Iraq need to be done with the consent of the Iraqi government. "I reassured [Alhakim] that that was America's very strong position and urged that the dialogue continue between the Iraqi and Turkish governments to find an amicable way out of this difficult situation," she said.
Turkey will not withdraw troops from the camp close to the DAESH-controlled city of Mosul, President Tayyip Erdoğan said on Friday, despite strong objections from Baghdad. The deployed soldiers are not combat troops, but have been sent to protect soldiers providing training to Iraqi and Kurdish forces, Erdoğan told reporters at a news conference before his departure for Turkmenistan. Turkey is "determined" to continue the training, he added.
Withdrawing Turkish troops from Iraq is out of the question and asserted that the soldiers are in Iraq as part of a training mission, he said on Thursday, adding that the Turkish troops were first deployed in 2002 and additional troops were deployed in 2014 in response to a request from Abadi.
"Turkish troops in Mosul are not there as combatants, they are trainers. Their numbers may vary depending on the number of Kurdish peshmerga troops. It is out of the question, for now, to pull them out," he said.
"Taking into account the Iraqi government's sensitivity, the decision was taken to reorganize the military personnel in the protection force at the Bashiqa camp," the prime minister's office said in a statement on Friday. However, this move, which was interpreted by many as an attempt to ease tensions, did not get a positive reaction from Baghdad.
Erdoğan also commented on Russia's proposal to the UNSC to issue a statement against Turkey's deployment of Turkish troops, saying: "The UNSC rejected the proposal; we will follow the process regarding the incident. However Turkey has chosen to cooperate with the international coalition against DAESH."
Reiterating that Turkey shares a 911- and 390-kilometer border with Syria and Iraq, respectively, Erdoğan said the current situation in neighboring countries carries vital importance to Turkey and added that Russia has to explain its presence in Syria since the country shares a border with neither Iraq nor Syria.
