The Iraqi Foreign Ministry today was instructed to lodge a formal complaint against Turkey to the UN Security Council, citing a solid week since Turkish ground troops arrived in the Nineveh Province, and continue to refuse to leave.
Turkey has insisted the troops are there to train Kurdish forces, and President Erdogan said a withdrawal was “out of the question.” The Iraqi government has previously sought help from NATO in convincing Turkey to leave, though unsuccessfully.
Iraq’s top religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, has issued a statement today urging the Iraqi government to do something, saying the government is obliged to show “no tolerance” to any violations of its sovereignty, and saying other nations shouldn’t use the “pretext of fighting terrorism” to send troops into Iraq.
Iraqi Prime Minister Hayder Abadi has been under growing pressure to stand up to other nations involved in the ISIS war, particularly with previous US deployments coming without any invitation from Iraqi officials. This sense that Abadi is being pushed around is only growing with Turkey’s presence.
Have the Turks been on the wrong side of the border for 17 seconds yet? Well, we know what the Turks would do.
What Empire USA wants, this is what Empire USA gets, or else.
Since Iraq wanted to co-operate with Putin, the point of all this may be to inflict another humilation on the little policeman: either he comes to Iraqs aid or he is further discredited as a bluffer and blusterer.
The Turks seem to have grown very ballsy during this conflict. From renewing the fight with it’s own Kurds, to bombing a Russian plane, to occupying Iraq without permission.
Does anyone doubt that Turkey would not do such things were it not a member of NATO? Does anyone doubt that the US has green-lighted these recent Turkish actions?