“Turkish forces will not be safe from attacks by resistance groups and Hashd al-Shaabi who have all the rights to expel them by force,” Firdous al-Awadi, a member of the State of Law coalition led by former Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, said in a statement on Friday.
The Turkish government will be considered responsible for any attacks on its forces present in Iraq “outside of the will of the Iraqi government,” she added.
Awadi said Turkey’s agenda in Nineveh province serves the interests of just one party that is calling for the division of the province into several parts and then linking some of those parts to the Kurdistan Region. She did not however make a clear reference to a specific party.
She also accused “al Nujaifis” of serving the interests of Turkey in northern Iraq, in reference to former Iraqi parliament speaker Osama Nujaifi and former Ninevah governor Athel al-Nujaifi.
The former Nineveh governor has called for Turkey to play a role in the military operation to liberate Mosul, citing Turkey’s recent success in Jarablus. “The people of Mosul want to see the same thing in their city,” al-Nujaifi told Turkey’s Anadolu Agency on September 9.
“If there is no Turkish military role, Turkey should at least play an active political role in resolving the region’s current dilemmas,” he said, adding that he believed Turkey’s role would serve to counterbalance Iran’s influence in Iraq.
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that his country is ready to participate in the Mosul offensive after the army’s success in its Euphrates Shield operation in northern Syria.
“The solution to the Mosul problem passes through lending an ear to Turkey’s rational perspective and suggestions,” Erdogan said, speaking after a bombing in Van earlier this week. “Our hope is that the central government in Iraq will see this.”
In his interview with Anadolu Agency, al-Nujaifi also called for the creation of a “federal region” in Nineveh province, breaking it into several provinces.
Turkish armed forces are in Bashiqa, northern Iraq providing training for Peshmerga and Iraqi Sunni forces. Last December, Turkey boosted its troop numbers at the camp sparking a diplomatic confrontation with Baghdad who asserted that the Turkish troops were in the country without Baghdad’s permission or knowledge. Turkey maintained that the troops were necessary to protect their training mission at the camp.
