Turkey has agreed to gradually hand over the Bashiqa-Zelikan military camp in northern Iraq to the Iraqi government.
The agreement was announced after a meeting late on Wednesday between Iraqi Prime Minister Ali Al Zaidi and Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York. They also agreed to deepen security co-operation, a joint statement said.
“Within this framework, they reached an agreement on fully establishing state authority in Sinjar and ending the presence of outlawed foreign armed elements,” the statement said, referring to Kurdish militants, some of whom are based in the mountainous Sinjar area of northern Iraq.
Turkey is continuing a peace process that it hopes will result in the disarmament of militants from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party and end a decades-old conflict.
Turkish forces will gradually hand over the Bashiqa-Zelikan base “in accordance with the agreed-upon mechanism and timetable” and following security measures taken by Iraq, the statement said. No timetable for the withdrawal of Turkish troops from Bashiqa was announced.
Ankara deployed troops to the area near Mosul in 2015, saying they were there to train and protect Iraqi forces and local Sunni Arab, Turkmen and Kurdish fighters preparing to fight ISIS, which seized Mosul in 2014.
The deployment sparked a dispute with Iraq, which demanded the troops’ withdrawal. Turkey still has several bases in the region that it says are there to protect its national security.
Mr Al Zaidi and Mr Erdogan also discussed bilateral ties and trade, stressing the need to urgently implement previously signed agreements and accelerate “strategic projects,” particularly the Development Road project, the statement added.
