Turkey Tentatively Joins Effort To Retake Mosul

On October 21, in front of a greeting party of press microphones, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced that Turkish and Iraqi governments have reached a tentative agreement that could allow Turkey to play a more involved role in retaking Mosul from the Islamic State.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan had met previously with Carter to protest that NATO-backed Turkey had not been more active in the U.S.-led assault on the Islamic State, explains a report by Reuters.

Be that as it may, Iraq has long been suspicious of any Turkish military operations on it’s land, let alone welcome a Turkish military intervention with open arms.

Carter declined to make a statement about his stance on Turkey’s potential involvement in a military operation on Iraqi soil.

The terms of the agreement are very vague thus far, as per Carter’s description of the meeting with Erdogan.

The details of Turkey’s role in the effort are still uncertain.

“That will have to obviously be something that the Iraqi government will need to agree to and I think there’s agreement there in principle,” said Carter told reporters in Turkey.

An Al Jazeera analysis released October 13 explained that the Turkish government previously expressed it’s intent to invade Mosul regardless of the stance of the Iraqi government.

“You are not my interlocutor. You are not on my level. You are not my equivalent. You are not of the same quality as me,” said Erdogan in a response to a demand Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi for Erdogan to withdraw Turkish troops from Iraq.

As for Turkey’s motives for wanting to intervene in Mosul, Turkish foreign Policy expert Ali Faik Demir points to the city’s demographics: “Mosul is a historically Sunni city and any attempt to change its demographic composition would be a direct threat t Turkey’s security.”

In contemplating how the chess game of international affair will play out, Demir speculates that, if Iraqi government forces are solely responsible for fighting the IS forces in Mosul, the city will become a generally hostile place for Sunni residents whether or not they are attached to the IS.

“If [Iraqi government] forces push into Mosul, where will the Sunni residents of the city go,” posits Demir. “Of course they cannot go to Syria, so they will move North, into Turkey.”

Sources: Reuters, Reuters, Al Jazeera/Photo Credit: DVIDSHUB/Flickr