Turkey claims of training Peshmerga forces mere joke: Analyst

Press TV has interviewed Jim W. Dean, managing editor of the Veterans Today from Atlanta, and Mehmet Solmaz, a news editor with the Daily Sabah, on fresh tensions between Baghdad and Ankara over the deployment of Turkish forces on the Iraqi soil near the northern city of Mosul.

Dean rejects as a mere “joke” Turkey’s claims that its deployment of troops to northern Iraq is aimed at training Kurdish Peshmerga fighters who are engaged in battles with the Daesh terror group there, saying the Peshmerga forces are “in a good shape” and do not need such training.

The Turkish forces stationed near Mosul are tasked with protecting the transshipment of the oil being smuggled from Iraq to Turkey, the analyst says.

According to Dean, Turkey, a NATO member, has access to satellite intelligence on Daesh oil shipments, but it never bombs the oil trucks because Ankara is complicit in illicit crude transfer from resource-rich areas controlled by the terrorist group.

Solmaz, for his part, believes there is no reason for Baghdad to be angered by the presence of Turkish forces in the country as they have been on Iraqi soil for “almost three years.”

He describes the deployment as part of Ankara’s unilateral campaign against Daesh terrorists, saying Turkish troops are there to train Kurdish fighters and Arab volunteer units in order to boost their fight against the Takfiri group.