The Prime Minister of the Iraqi Central Government Haider al-Abadi pledged to prevent Kurdish militants based in the northern part of his country from staging cross-border attacks against neighboring Turkey. Abadi’s pledge, made during a phone call with Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim, came a day after Ankara threatened to intervene directly against Kurdish militants, belonging to the internationally recognized terror group PKK, if an Iraqi military operation in the Sinjar region failed. Prime Minister al-Abadi said, “We had a phone call yesterday from Turkish prime minister and the Turkish prime minister affirmed respect for Iraq’s sovereignty and Iraq’s borders, saying that it (Turkey) will not take any action against Iraqi sovereignty. He also affirmed that there was no agreement with the Iraqi government to launch a joint military action and he said in news conference that he was probably misquoted by the media. He said that we (Turkey) would not take any action with agreement of the Iraqi government,” the Iraqi leader stressed at a press conference in Baghdad.
Turkey has long complained that fighters of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) are being given free rein to operate out of Sinjar against Turkish targets – a growing frustration that has led Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan to warn its neighbor that Ankara would do “what is necessary” if the Iraqi operation failed, raising the prospect of a possible Turkish military invasion into Iraq.