Turkey stops training Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga after independence

29.9.17

Turkey stops training Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga after independence: [.alaraby.co.uk] Government spokesman Bekir Bozdag reiterated on Thursday any such actions would be coordinated with the Iraqi central government.

Bozdag, also a deputy prime minister, told broadcaster TGRT in an interview that more steps would follow the peshmerga decision and that the prime ministers of Turkey and Iraq would meet soon.

Turkey, which is home to the region's largest Kurdish population, is battling a three-decade Kurdish insurgency in its southeast, which borders northern Iraq.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said it was inevitable that the referendum "adventure" in northern Iraq, carried out despite Turkey's warnings, would end in disappointment.

"With its independence initiative, the northern Iraq regional government has thrown itself into the fire," he said in a speech to police officers at his palace in Ankara.

Earlier this week, Erdogan said Iraqi Kurds would go hungry if his country halted the flow of trucks and oil across the border, near where Turkish and Iraqi soldiers have been carrying out military exercises this week.

Hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil a day flow through a pipeline in Turkey from northern Iraq, connecting the region to global oil markets.