ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Turkish officials have confirmed that Sunni militia trained by the Turkish army in northern Iraq will participate in the upcoming operation to liberate Iraq’s second city of Mosul from Islamic State (ISIS) militants. Turkey’s state-run Anadolu agency cited unnamed officials on Friday who said they took part in talks between Turkey and the United States and determined that the operation will begin in the coming days provided “there is no extraordinary development.” Anadolu also said the claims were backed up by relevant Iraqi sources. Turkish military forces have been training a Sunni militia at the Bashiqa training camp near Mosul to fight ISIS for well over a year now. The militia, formerly known as the Hashd al-Watani, is commanded by Atheel al-Nujaifi, the former governor of Nineveh. Last week, a spokesperson for the Sunni militia told Rudaw that the Sunni forces would come under Peshmerga command for the Mosul operation. “All the plans have been put in place, and there is a formal decision for the Hashd al-Watani militia to be mixed with the Peshmerga forces in the Mosul war,” Zuhair Hazin Jabouri told Rudaw. “The Hashd al-Watani is to receive its commands from the Peshmerga forces during the war,” Jabouri added. The decision was made in talks between Erbil, Baghdad, and Washington after resolving what Jabouri described as "technical problems." The militia changed its name to the Nineveh Guard on Friday. Turkey has a small number of tanks and artillery at Bashiqa which may play a supporting role to a Nineveh Guard offensive in the coming days. The presence of Turkish military forces at Bashiqa has been a cause of recent tensions between Baghdad and Ankara. Baghdad opposes the Turkish participation as well as Turkish participation in the Mosul operation. The Turkish government has dismissed these Iraqi protests and insisted that it has a right to be there to combat ISIS and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) as well as secure the current ethno-sectarian demographics in Mosul itself.
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