Iraq clashes with Turkey over Mosul
ERBIL, Iraq — A dispute between Iraq and Turkey has emerged as a dramatic geopolitical sideshow to the complicated military campaign to retake Mosul, Iraq’s secondlargest city, from the Islamic State.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey has insisted on a role in the battle for Mosul, trying to ramp up an involvement in Iraq that already has alarmed the Iraqi government.
“We have a historical responsibility in the region,” Erdogan said in a recent speech, drawing on his country’s history of empire and defeat,
from Ottoman rule of the Middle East to its loss in World War I. “If we want to be both at the table and in the field, there is a reason.”
In response, the normally mild-mannered Iraqi prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, warned last week of a military confrontation between Turkey and Iraq. If Turkish forces intervene in Mosul, he said, they will not “be in a picnic.”
“We are ready for them,” Mr. Abadi said. “This is not a threat or a warning, this is about Iraqi dignity.”
The rift between Turkey and Iraq is no mere diplomatic row; it is a stark example of the complete breakdown in sovereignty of not just Iraq but Syria as well. The Islamic State has erased the borders between the two countries, while Turkey has stationed troops in both countries without the permission of either government.
Turkey already has angered the Iraqi government by keeping a unit of troops at a base in Bashiqa, an area of northern Iraq near Mosul and surrounded by Islamic State territory. For more than a year, the Turks also have been training Kurdish pesh merga forces and Sunni Arab fighters in Iraq, including a militia led by a former governor of Mosul, Atheel al-Nujaifi.
The Turkish military deployment, even just to train local forces, has been bitterly opposed by the Iraqi government, and Mr. Abadi has demanded that the troops leave.
Now that the battle for Mosul has started, Erdogan has given a number of incendiary speeches in which he has seemed to suggest he is itching for the Turkish military to become directly involved in the fighting.
The battle for Mosul began last week with a push by Kurdish and Iraqi forces, backed by American advisers and United States airstrikes, to take back dozens of villages outside the city. For the United States, Turkey, a NATO ally, has again proven itself a difficult partner in the fight against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, ISIL or Daesh.
As it has in Syria, where Turkey has opposed, and sometimes bombed, Syrian Kurdish allies that are working with the United States to fight the Islamic State, Turkey has undermined American goals in Iraq by insisting on playing a role in the fight for Mosul.
For almost a year, American diplomats have sought to contain the crisis. They have encouraged the Turks to respect Iraq’s sovereignty and aid the fight against the Islamic State by carrying out activities under the umbrella of the United States-led coalition.
But Turkey has kept its troops in Bashiqa, a deployment the Iraqi government says it never approved.