Iraq Gives Turkey 48 Hours to Withdraw Troops

Turkey: No New Troops Will Head to Iraq, for Now

Tensions between Iraq and Turkey are once again on the rise, after the Friday deployment of Turkish ground troops into northern Iraq, a move Turkey said was meant to train Kurdish Peshmerga forces, but which came without any permission from the central government.

Iraqi Prime Minister Hayder Abadi today gave Turkey 48 hours to withdraw all troops from his country, warning that the nation would use “all available options,” including asking the UN Security Council to intervene, if Turkey insisted on staying.

Turkish PM Ahmet Davutoglu said that the Turkish government would halt any further transfer of troops into Iraq “for now,” and other Turkish officials suggested that they were hoping to come to an agreement on the matter.

Davutoglu did not, however, make any comment on what was going to happen with the troops Turkey has already sent into Iraq, meaning that 48-hour ultimatum is still ticking down. The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), whose troops the Turkish forces are there to train, have by and large stayed out of the matter.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.