Botched Mosul assault would trigger refugee wave, Turkey warns

Any mistake in a planned US-backed operation to drive Daesh from the Iraqi city of Mosul could result in hundreds of thousands of refugees, Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said on Thursday.
Turkey is locked in an escalating row with Iraq over who should take part in the Mosul assault and Kalin voiced concern that Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants could be involved. “Reports that the PKK may take part in the Mosul operation greatly worry us,” he told a news conference, saying Turkey had no “secret agenda” in Iraq and favored solving problems with Baghdad through dialogue.
“A mistake made there could result in hundreds of thousands of people becoming refugees,” Kalin said. “A mistake in the Mosul operation will not be limited to Iraq, it will impact the whole region.”
The Iraqi Foreign Ministry summoned the Turkish ambassador on Thursday to protest the continued presence of Turkish troops in northern Iraq without Baghdad’s permission, a ministry spokesman said.
The Turkish ambassador was given “a strongly worded formal note of protest” regarding “the continued presence of Turkish forces near Bashiqa and recent abusive statements from their leadership,” spokesman Ahmed Jamal told AFP.
The PKK is designated a terrorist group by Ankara and its Western allies. It has fought a 32-year insurgency in Turkey, in which more than 40,000 people have been killed, and its leadership is based in the mountains of northern Iraq.
Mosul, home to up to 1.5 million people, has been at the heart of Daesh’s self-declared caliphate in Iraq since 2014. The battle for the city is seen beginning this month.
Turkish soldiers have been training Sunni and Kurdish Peshmerga units at Iraq’s Bashiqa camp and want them involved in the assault. Baghdad’s Shiite-led government objects to their presence, wanting its forces at the forefront of the offensive.
The US has said any foreign forces in Iraq should be there with the approval of the Baghdad government and under the umbrella of the US-led coalition fighting Daesh.
Turkey is part of the US-led coalition against Daesh in Syria and has played a frontline role there. It says its troops are in Iraq as part of an international mission to train and equip Iraqi forces to fight Daesh.
Earlier this week, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi to “know your place,” and said that he is “not on my level.”
And Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said last week that the country’s forces would stay “no matter what the Iraqi government in Baghdad says.”
Abadi has repeatedly demanded that the Turkish troops be withdrawn and said that they will not take part in the impending operation to recapture Mosul from Daesh.
The US State Department issued a statement earlier this week that implicitly backed Iraq’s position, saying that: “We believe all international forces in Iraq should be there with the approval of and in coordination with the government of Iraq.”
Iraqi forces are preparing for the operation to retake Mosul from Daesh, which is expected to be the toughest and most complex battle of the country’s more than two-year war.

Source: Arab News