BAGHDAD, Iraq - The anticipated offensive to retake Mosul from the Islamic State (ISIS) is unlikely to begin as long as Turkish troops remain in northern Iraq, an Iraqi lawmaker warned Saturday, escalating the recent diplomatic row between Baghdad and Ankara over Turkish army presence near Mosul.
"I think that as long as these Turkish troops remain around Mosul, the operation to control the city will not start, or there must be a new agreement for the Turkish force not to take part in the offensive," lawmaker Abdelaziz Hasan, who is a member of the defense and security committee at the Iraqi parliament, told Rudaw.
On Saturday, several Iraqi leaders across the country, including the influential Shiite strongman Ammar Al-Hakeem, called on Turkey to withdraw its troops before the Mosul operation starts and avert possible sectarian tensions between rival groups in the country.
Lawmaker Hasan told Rudaw that, without a prior agreement between Ankara and Baghdad, the Mosul offensive could trigger a sectarian war between Shiite and Sunni militias in Nineveh province.
"There should be an agreement that the Turkish troops won't take part in the operation," he added.
Turkey has in the past said it will participate in the looming operation and justified its decision as "resistance for the sake of humanity" against ISIS.
With over 1,500 Sunni volunteers, including dozens of Kurdish fighters, the Gudadi military base in Bashik is poised to play a crucial role in pushing back Islamic militants from Mosul.
The base is only 30 kilometers northeast of Mosul city and was established by the former Mosul governor Atheel Nujaifi.
In December 2015, the Gudadi base made international headlines after it was reported that Turkey had deployed a military force to train the Sunni volunteers.
Most of the Turkish troops -- some 900 heavily armed soldiers -- withdrew from Bashik in the coming weeks, but dozens of Turkish trainers remained in the base to complete the military preparation of Sunni recruits. Ankara gradually deployed some 2,000 military advisors to complete what they announced was the ongoing training of the local Sunni recruits.
Turkish officials announced earlier this year that one of their trainers was killed in the Gudadi base and another injured following an ISIS attack.
Ankara has said that its troops originally entered the disputed Nineveh Plains, which is home to mixed ethnic and religious communities, after consultations with Iraqi authorities in Baghdad.
The 15,00-strong Sunni fighters in Bashik are only a fraction of the wider Turkey-backed Sunni militia known as Hashd al-Watani, which is the military equivalent of the more powerful Iran-backed Shiite militia called Hashd al- Shaabi.
Hashd al-Watani was initially established to recruit Sunni fighters who were willing to take part in a possible assault on ISIS in the Sunni heartland of Mosul.
Until late 2015, the Sunni group was funded by Iraq’s predominantly Shiite government in a bid to avert sectarian tensions in a region with mostly underprivileged Sunni populations who have often had hostile attitudes towards government policies.
Baghdad, however, removed in May 2015 Mosul’s exiled governor Atheel Nujaifi, a Sunni, accusing him of mismanaging the Sunni militia and turning it into his own army.
The Iraqi government also froze payments to the group in August 2015. Sunni sources told Rudaw in December last year that Ankara had paid the salaries of the troops in Gudadi since.
Also, the presence of guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) has added to the row, with many Iraqi Turkmen officials calling on the Kurdish groups to retreat from areas near Mosul.
"I think the presence of PKK guerrillas around Mosul, which is not an Iraqi group, is not right and harmful for the Iraqi people," Turkman MP Hasan Toran told Rudaw.
"There is no justification for their participation in the offensive to control Mosul," he added.
