Iraq denounces Turkish military move in country's north as 'violation'

Delegation led by Baghdad's national security adviser arrives in Kurdish region

Turkish troops, pictured here on an unrelated deployment, made an incursion into Iraq to chase down a Kurdish separatist group, Iraqi officials said. AFP

Iraq has reacted angrily to the latest Turkish military move in the north of the country to chase down a Kurdish separatist group operating on both sides of the border.

The incursion was a “violation”, according to the government in Baghdad.

For decades, Ankara has been launching military operations against the outlawed militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) which has bases in the Iraqi Kurdish region, from where it launches operations against Turkey.

Turkish operations in mountainous northern Iraq, which have been on and off for decades, have been expanded in recent years with soldiers on the ground backed by air strikes, drones and artillery.

In recent weeks, residents in Dahuk province said that Turkish forces have been patrolling and setting up checkpoints in new areas deep in the Iraqi territory.

Late on Wednesday, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al Sudani chaired a meeting of the Ministerial Council for National Security and discussed “the interventions and violations by Turkish forces in the shared border areas”, Iraqi military spokesman Maj Gen Yahya Rasool said.

The council said it rejects “Turkish military incursions and the violations of the Iraqi territory”, Maj Gen Rasool added.

It urged Turkey to “respect the principles of good neighbourliness and to diplomatically engage with the Iraqi government for any security-related matters”.

A delegation led by National Security Adviser Qasim Al Araji arrived in the region on Thursday to “assess the general situation and develop a unified stance on this matter”, the Iraqi government added.

Turkish forces “have advanced 15km into Iraqi Kurdistan territory”, the Community Peacemaker Teams, an NGO registered in the US that monitors Turkish operations in northern Iraq, told AFP.

Turkey has deployed drone warfare across wide swathes of northern Iraq to eliminate PKK members, as far as Kalar, south of Sulaymaniyah, in areas where it would be extremely difficult to deploy ground troops because it is far from the Turkish border.

In an interview this week, Turkey's Defence Minister, Yasar Guler, said his country is “determined” to clear the border area with Iraq and neighbouring Syria of “terrorists”.

A senior official for Peshmerga, the local security forces in the Kurdistan region, said that despite Iraqi protestations against Turkish incursions, there is continuing co-ordination between Baghdad, Ankara and Erbil.

“The visits of Iraqi security delegations to the Kurdistan region do not include any kind of discussions about confronting the Turkish army, as there is co-ordination about confronting the PKK between Baghdad and Ankara and Baghdad and Erbil,” the official told The National on condition of anonymity.

He added that both the Iraqi army and the Kurdish Peshmerga forces are “not prepared to confront the Turkish army, and they have no intention of doing so.”

However, some forces belonging to the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) help the Turkish army with intelligence, and on a technical level, including the border units, and the Barzan and Zirfan forces, he said.

He was referring to two forces, one deployed in the Barzan area and the other in mountainous regions.

In that struggle, he said, KDP has drawn its own lines.

“If the KDP participated properly and truly in a war against the PKK, this would be seen as political suicide for them, because its forces are not capable of carrying out a war with rockets and drones,” he added.

'Security corridor'

Turkey sees the presence of the PKK in Iraq as a major national security threat and the group's presence is one of the biggest challenge to relations between Ankara and Baghdad.

Senior officials have vowed to create a “security corridor” up to 40km wide along the Iraqi and Syrian borders – a move, it says, is designed to prevent attacks by the PKK on Turkish soil.

Despite the protests from Baghdad, Turkey's military operations have continued in northern Iraq.

In the past 24 hours, Turkey's defence ministry announced it had “neutralised” at least three PKK members in northern Iraq, and seized stashes of weapons and supplies including rifles, rocket launchers and ammunition.

The PKK has been waging an insurgency against Turkey since 1984, initially seeking an independent Kurdish state before changing its demands to an autonomous Kurdish region within Turkey. About 40,000 people, many of them civilians, have been killed in the conflict.

The group has training camps and bases in the Iraqi Kurdistan region and is designated a terrorist group by the US and EU.

In March, Baghdad listed the PKK as a “banned organisation”, and Ankara has called on the Iraqi government to do more in the fight against the militant group.

During a visit to Iraq in April, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke of “expectations” of Iraq in the fight against the PKK. Mr Al Sudani spoke of “bilateral security co-ordination” that would meet the needs of both countries.

However, Iraqi Defence Minister Thabet Al Abbasi in March ruled out joint operations between Iraq and Turkey.

Ankara's operations against PKK fighters in Iraq and Syria have led to casualties not only among the fighters, but also civilians. Operations in Syria have also provoked anger in Washington, which has forces alongside Kurdish armed groups, a legacy from the war on ISIS.

The Iraqi Kurdish region has complicated relations with the PKK because its presence impedes trade relations with Turkey.

Last week, Iraqi security forces announced the arrest of three suspects linked to PKK, accusing them of sabotage attacks.

Two of the suspects were allegedly linked to the local Peshmerga's Unit 70 forces, which are affiliated to the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) – one of the two ruling parties in the region, said Hemin Mirany, a senior official in Kurdistan's Interior Ministry.

They were recruited by the PKK and were “trained by fighters coming from Turkey and Syria in particular”, he added.

Unlike the Kurdistan Democratic Party, the most powerful party in the Iraqi Kurdish region, the PUK – the KDP's main political rival – maintains limited ties to the PKK.

The other suspect was an “officer in the anti-terrorist services of Sulaimaniyah”, Mr Mirany said, referring to the Counter-Terrorism Group run by the PUK.

Lizzie Porter reported from Istanbul