MPs from 5 Kurdish parties call on Turkish troops to leave Iraq

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Five factions in the Kurdistan parliament have called the presence of Turkish troops in the town of Bashiqa as “illegal,” demanding that Turkey immediately withdraw its troops from Iraq.

 

“The Turkish army transgressed the borders and based (itself) on the Kurdistan Region’s land,” read a statement signed by MPs from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), Change Movement (Gorran), Kurdistan Islamic Group (Komal), Kurdistan Islamic Movement and Kurdistan Communist Party.

 

It added that having Turkish troops based in Iraq is “illegal and unconstitutional.”

 

The five Kurdish parties urged Turkey to “immediately pull out its troops from the Kurdistan Region as we are committed to preserving the sovereignty of the land of Kurdistan.”

 

The neighboring countries “have to respect each other’s sovereignty,” it stressed.

 

Iraq has publicly urged Ankara to withdraw its troops from its base in Bashiqa and warned against Turkish involvement in the long-anticipated Mosul operation against the Islamic State (ISIS). But Ankara has announced it will take part in the Mosul operation by supporting a local Sunni militia and Kurdish Peshmerga forces, something Baghdad has publicly been opposed to.

 

Turkey has as many as 2,000 troops based in northern Iraq, most of them in the Bashiqa military camp where they are training local Sunni fighters, Turkey says.

 

Last week, the Turkish parliament voted to extend the army’s military mandates in both Iraq and Syria, where Turkish forces are trying to establish a 5,000 square kilometer safe zone along its border. 

 

On Wednesday, the Iraqi Ministry of Foreign Affairs made a formal request to the UN Security Council, asking to convene an urgent meeting to discuss the Turkish military presence on Iraqi soil and “interference in the Iraqi internal affairs,” read a statement issued by the ministry.