CAIRO: Turkiye and Iraq agreed Wednesday that Turkish forces should progressively hand over a military base in northern Iraq to the Iraqi government, they said after talks in New York, adding they also agreed to end the presence of “outlawed armed elements” in northern Iraq.
Iraqi Prime Minister Ali Al-Zaidi and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan met on the margins of the United Nations General Assembly and agreed to deepen security cooperation, the sides said in a joint statement. Within this framework, they agreed on full establishment of state authority in Sinjar and ending the presence of outlawed foreign armed elements,” they said, referring to Kurdish militants, some of whom are headquartered in the mountainous Sinjar area of northern Iraq.
Turkey is pursuing a peace process that it believes would lead to the disarmament of militants from the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and end a decades-old conflict. The statement Wednesday said Turkish forces would progressively transfer control of the Bashiqa-Zelikan base, a military facility in northern Iraq near Mosul, to the Iraqi government “in line with the agreed mechanism and timeline” and security measures implemented by Iraq.
One Iraqi military general involved in the talks told Reuters that the phased evacuation of Turkish troops from the Bashiqa camp and another small station near Mosul was likely to be completed by the end of this year. Turkiye did not immediately comment on the timeline.
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