Middle East & North Africa
Iraq: Turkish army to begin withdrawing from the Bashiqa base in November – the Sinjar and PKK condition
Iraqi military spokesman Sabah al-Numan said the handover of the Turkish base near Mosul begins within November and will be complete by the turn of the year; a joint Turkish-Iraqi statement ties it to Sinjar.
The Turkish military presence at the Bashiqa-Zilkan base, north-east of Mosul, is entering a countdown. Sabah al-Numan, spokesman for the commander in chief of Iraq’s armed forces, said on Monday, November 9 on state television Al-Iraqiya that the handover begins within November and that “the camp will be in the hands of Iraqi security forces at the end of this year and the beginning of the next”. A joint security committee of the two countries has already begun its work.
The statement was preceded by a joint Turkish-Iraqi announcement published on Sunday, November 8 by the Directorate of Communications of the Turkish Presidency. In it the Turkish side says it is beginning to take the steps that fall to it for the gradual handover of the facility to the federal government in Baghdad. The two countries also decided to activate the Joint Security Coordination Committee, which will verify and monitor progress in Sinjar.
The agreement was reached on September 23 in New York, at the meeting of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan with Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi. The announcement of that day explicitly linked the withdrawal to the progress of Iraqi security measures in Sinjar, without giving dates. The Turkish Ministry of National Defence repeated on October 1 that the base will be handed over in stages.
Sinjar and the PKK at the centre of the deal
The difference between the two texts is indicative. The Turkish text of the joint announcement speaks of ending the PKK’s presence in Sinjar, while the Arabic one issued in Baghdad mentions only armed groups. The Iraqi army took over security in the area in October, and on October 26 the Sinjar Resistance Units (YBŞ), which Ankara regards as an offshoot of the PKK, agreed to join the federal forces with 4,165 fighters. Al-Numan had said that Turkey invoked the PKK to keep an army in Iraq and that the integration would help end that presence. The PKK had announced its dissolution in May 2025.
The base was set up during the war against the Islamic State and was reinforced in 2015, when Turkish military personnel trained Peshmerga and Sunni Arab fighters there. Successive governments in Baghdad never accepted the deployment, which took place without federal approval, and Iraq has reported hundreds of Turkish violations of its territory to the United Nations.
The agreement covers only Bashiqa. Turkey has for decades maintained forces in the Kurdistan Region for operations against the PKK, in the area where the party had withdrawn its forces from Turkey. Al-Zaidi said on October 23 that there is an understanding for the withdrawal of Turkish forces from Iraqi territory, with no timetable.
