Turkey must withdraw its troops from Iraqi territory

Al Abadi’s denial of any agreement is definitive and Erdogan must heed the prime minister of Iraq

The Turkish government should withdraw its troops from Iraqi territory as soon as possible. Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi is right to regard the deployment of Turkish troops in northern Iraq near Mosul as a violation of Iraq’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and he has refused to categorise the Turkish incursion as an anti-terrorist action despite Turkey’s claim that the instalment on December 4 of 150 soldiers, plus artillery and more than 25 tanks, is for training Kurdish Peshmerga under previous agreements between Ankara and Baghdad.

The Iraqi government has appealed to the UN Security Council for help in getting the Turkish forces out, but Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has insisted that withdrawing Turkish forces from Iraq is “out of question”. Al Abadi has the active support of most of his population in insisting on the sanctity of Iraqi territory. Thousands of people all across central and southern Iraq have protested against Turkey’s actions, such as a gathering of at least 4,000 people in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square, which called the actions of Turkish authorities “a violation of Iraq’s sovereignty”. In Basra and many other major cities, similar public calls were made.

Al Abadi has not had much opportunity to show himself as a strong Iraqi nationalist, and he is correctly using this gross violation to remind people of the importance of the vision of a united Iraq with strong and secure borders.