Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Iraqi: Turks in country violate law
BAGHDAD — The presence of Turkish troops near the Islamic State-held city of Mosul in northern Iraq is a “violation” of international law, Iraq’s president said Saturday.
President Fuad Masum called the move a “violation of international norms, laws and Iraq’s national sovereignty,” and he said it was contributing to increased tensions in the region.
Hakim al-Zamili, the head of parliament’s security and defense committee, went a step further, calling on Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to launch airstrikes against the Turkish troops if they remain in Iraqi territory.
Turkey has said a military battalion equipped with armored vehicles has been in the Bashiqa region, close to Mosul in the northern Nineveh province, for the past five months as part of a training mission to help forces fighting Islamic State militants. Mosul fell to the extremists in June 2014 amid a collapse of Iraqi security forces.
Plans to try to retake Mosul in the spring were sidelined as the extremist group advanced on other fronts.
The founder of the training camp outside Mosul, former Nineveh Gov. Atheel al-Nujaifi, said the Turkish trainers were at his base at the request of al-Abadi and Defense Minister Khaled al-Obeidi. He said the Turkish forces are training but not arming Sunni fighters.
“They didn’t give us any weapons even though we asked them to,” he said. “We equipped this force from the black market with our own money, and we believe they’re the best force to liberate Mosul. These people will be very effective to hold ground because they are from there and there’ll be no resistance to them from local people.”
Sunni fighters in Nineveh and the western Anbar province say the Shiite-dominated government has failed to provide them with the support and weaponry needed to defeat the Islamic State. The government fears that arming Sunni tribes and militias could backfire. Sunni grievances were a key factor fueling the rise of the militant group, and many Sunnis initially welcomed the extremists as liberators.