Turkey is determined to take part in a planned operation by coalition forces to oust Daesh from the Iraqi city of Mosul and will implement a “plan B” if it is not involved, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday.
In a speech in the city of Konya, Erdogan said Turkey would make its desire to take part in the operation known to its international partners in the coming days. He did not offer details on what an alternative strategy would entail.
Ankara has been locked in a fierce row with Baghdad over who should take part in the US-backed assault on Mosul, which is expected to begin this month.
Turkey fears the use of Shiite militias, which the Iraqi army has relied on in the past, will stoke sectarian unrest and trigger an exodus of refugees.
“We will convey our request to coalition forces that we are determined to take our place in a coalition in Iraq. If they don’t want us, our Plan B will come into effect. If Turkey isn’t safe, nobody in the region is safe,” Erdogan said.
Turkish soldiers have been training Sunni and allied Kurdish peshmerga units at Iraq’s Bashiqa camp, near Mosul, and want them involved in the assault. Baghdad objects to the Turkish military presence in northern Iraq.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi has said Turkey risks triggering a regional war. His government has requested an emergency United Nations Security Council meeting to discuss the issue, and both countries have summoned each other’s ambassadors in a mounting diplomatic standoff.
“You called us to Bashiqa, and now you are telling us to leave. Excuse me, but I have kin there, I have Turkmen brothers there, Turkish brothers who ask us to come and help,” Erdogan said. “Excuse me, but I won’t leave.”
Meanwhile, Daesh has crushed a rebellion plot in Mosul, led by one of the group’s commanders who aimed to switch sides and help deliver the caliphate’s Iraqi capital to government forces, residents and Iraqi security officials said.
Daesh executed 58 people suspected of taking part in the plot after it was uncovered last week. Residents, who spoke to Reuters from some of the few locations in the city that have phone service, said the plotters were killed by drowning and their bodies were buried in a mass grave in a wasteland on the outskirts of the city.
Among them was a local aide of Daesh leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, who led the plotters, according to matching accounts given by five residents, by Hisham Al-Hashimi, an expert on Daesh affairs that advises the government in Baghdad and by colonel Ahmed Al-Taie, from Mosul’s Nineveh province Operation Command’s military intelligence.
Reuters did not reveal the name of the plot leader to avoid increasing the safety risk for his family, nor the identities of those inside the city who spoke about the plot.
The aim of the plotters was to undermine Daesh’s defense of Mosul in the upcoming fight, expected to be the biggest battle in Iraq since the 2003 US-led invasion.
According to Hashimi, the dissidents were arrested after one of them was caught with a message on his phone mentioning a transfer of weapons. He confessed during interrogation that weapons were being hidden in three locations, to be used in a rebellion to support the Iraqi Army when it closes in on Mosul.
Daesh raided the three houses used to hide the weapons on Oct. 4, Hashimi said.
“Those were Daesh members who turned against the group in Mosul,” said Iraqi Counterterrorism Service spokesman Sabah Al-Numani in Baghdad. “This is a clear sign that the terrorist organization has started to lose support not only from the population, but even from its own members.”

Source: Arab News