“Ambassador of Iran would be the last person to lecture Turkey about respecting borders of Iraq,” tweeted Fatih Yildiz on Saturday evening in response to comments made by the Iranian ambassador calling on Ankara to withdraw its troops from Iraq and respect international borders.
“We reject military intervention in Iraq and Turkish forces should not pose a threat or violate Iraqi soil,” Iran’s Ambassador to Iraq Iraj Masjedi told Rudaw’s Mushtaq Ramadhan on Tuesday in an exclusive interview aired on Saturday night. “The security of the Iraqi area should be maintained by Iraqi forces and [Kurdistan] Region forces in their area.”
Iran, itself, is widely accused of meddling in Iraqi affairs. Recent years of popular protest in Iraq have seen calls for an end to Iran's influence on the country.
Turkey has established a number of military outposts on Iraqi territory in the Kurdistan Region since the mid-1990s to reportedly fight guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), increasing its cross-border footprint in recent years. Since June 2020, Turkey has launched three major air and ground operations, establishing new outposts deep inside the Kurdistan Region.
“We do not accept at all, be it Turkey or any other country to intervene in Iraq militarily or advance or have a military presence in Iraq,” Masjedi said. “Therefore we believe the Turks must return to their international position and be stationed there, and the security of Iraq be maintained by Iraqis.”
Baghdad has lodged formal protests on a number of occasions about violations of its territory by Turkish forces and aircraft, but to no avail and in recent years, Ankara has stepped up its airstrikes in the Kurdistan Region, killing top operatives of the PKK. The militant group has been active since 1984 and states it is fighting for the rights of the Kurdish people inside Turkey.
Turkey has threatened that its next operation would be in the Shingal (Sinjar) area to clear it of a Yazidi militant group established with the help of the PKK in the aftermath of the genocidal attack of the Islamic State (ISIS) in August 2014.
Iran has also conducted military activity in the Kurdistan Region to counter armed groups, some of which have been coordinated with Turkey. Both Ankara and Tehran shelled the Haji Omaran area of the Kurdistan Region, close to the border with Iran, last year.
