"PM's advisor says Turkish military presence in Iraq is "occupation

Shafaq News/ Khalid al-Yaqoubi, Advisor to Iraq's prime minister on Security Affairs, denounced the presence of Turkish military bases in Iraq as an "occupation" as he met with Turkish officer in a discussion panel at the 2024 Rafidain Dialogue Forum in Baghdad on Tuesday.

"The presence of Turkish bases in Iraq is partly an occupation," he said, hinting at the ongoing clashes between Turkiye and the anti-Ankrara Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

Admiral Ali Deniz Kutluk, a naval officer in the Turkish military, defended his country's position, stating, "Turkey has the right to self-defense, and there is no intention to occupy Iraq."

"The presence of our bases here is aimed at preventing attacks on Turkey from the Iraqi territories," he added. "When Iraq's sovereignty was threatened, Turkey acted to safeguard its security, deploying forces in Iraq," he said, indicating ongoing discussions on the withdrawal of Turkish forces from Iraq.

The Turkish Armed Forces have been conducting cross-border military operations against the Kurdistan Workers' Party in northern Iraq since the 1980s.

In July 2015, a two-and-a-half year-long ceasefire broke down, and the conflict between Ankara and militants of the PKK – recognized as a terrorist organization by Turkiye, the U.S., Russia, and the European Union – entered one of its deadliest chapters in nearly four decades.

Since that date, the conflict has progressed through several phases. Between roughly 2015 and 2017 the violence devastated communities in some urban centers of Turkey's majority-Kurdish southeast and – at times – struck into the heart of the country's largest metropolitan centers. From 2017 onward, the fighting moved into rural areas of Turkiye's southeast.

As the Turkish military pushed more militants out of the country, by 2019 the conflict's concentration shifted to northern Iraq and northern Syria.