ANKARA, Turkey (AP) – Turkey can’t be excluded from a possible operation to recapture the Iraqi city of Mosul, Turkey’s president said Tuesday, telling Iraq’s leader to “know his place.”
Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s remarks were likely to add to tensions between the two neighbors, which are key U.S. partners in the fight against the Islamic State group.
In a speech delivered in Istanbul, Erdogan also said Turkish troops wouldn’t withdraw from a base near Mosul, saying the Turkish army wouldn’t take orders from Baghdad. Turkey is training anti-IS fighters to help retake Mosul from the extremist group.
Turkey-Iraq relations became strained after Ankara sent troops late last year to the region of Bashiqa, northeast of Mosul, to train anti-IS fighters there – a move Baghdad has since labeled a “blatant violation” of its sovereignty. Iraq has demanded a Turkish withdrawal, but Ankara has repeatedly ignored the call.
Turkish warnings about possible sectarian clashes in Mosul if the majority Sunni region were placed under Shiite militia control also have drawn Baghdad’s ire. Last week, both countries summoned each other’s ambassadors while Iraq requested an emergency session of the U.N. Security Council over the presence of unauthorized Turkish troops in northern Iraq.