Tucked behind Bashiqa Mountain in northern Iraq, some 500 Turkish troops stationed alongside a local militia say they are training and arming Iraqi fighters to help defeat the Islamic State group. But their presence has strained relations between Iraq and Turkey and further complicated plans to retake the militant-held city of Mosul.
Turkish heavy artillery sits along the base’s outer perimeter. Past rows of blast-walls and barbed wire, dozens of trailers house some 1,000 men armed with assault rifles and outfitted with new body armor and boots.
“Everything you see here is thanks to Turkey, we didn’t receive any single thing from the central government,” said Iraqi Maj. Gen. Saadi Obeidi, the base’s commander, sitting beside a Turkish captain to brief visiting journalists. Obeidi and the captain outlined the group’s military achievements and boasted of occasionally receiving U.S.-led coalition air support.
On a scale diorama dotted with toy soldiers, the men traced the front line with IS just 3 miles to the south. Obeidi, who is no longer in Iraq’s conventional military, but served as an officer in former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s army, blamed sectarianism for the Shiite-dominated government’s refusal to arm his mostly Sunni fighters.
The controversy over the Turkish forces began late last year when a few hundred Turkish troops, tanks and heavy artillery moved into Iraq’s north, sparking repeated calls from Baghdad to withdraw. Ankara has insisted that they entered Iraq with permission from Baghdad to help train anti-IS forces, citing comments from Iraq’s prime minister in 2014 thanking Turkey for their support against IS as proof. Iraq’s central government denies those claims.
“Initially, the central government invited us here,” said the Turkish captain at Zelkan Camp, who spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to talk to the media. “Some things have changed since then, but we are already here, so we won’t leave until Ankara tells us to.”
Now, as Iraqi forces gear up for the long-awaited Mosul operation, Turkey says the troops, initially described as trainers, cannot be barred from having a role in retaking the city.