Turkey agrees to gradually hand the Bashiqa-Zelikan military camp in northern Iraq to the Iraqi government

24 September 2026

Turkey has agreed to gradually hand the Bashiqa-Zelikan military camp in northern Iraq over to the Iraqi government, under an agreed mechanism and timetable. The deal was announced after Iraqi Prime Minister Ali Al Zaidi met Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in New York, where both were attending the UN General Assembly. Ankara deployed troops to the Mosul area in 2015, saying they were training local forces against ISIS, and the Iraqi government has treated the presence as a breach of its sovereignty ever since. No timetable for the withdrawal of Turkish troops from Bashiqa was announced. Turkish operations in northern Iraq have been directed at the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, whose fighters hold bases in the mountainous Sinjar area. The two leaders also reviewed the Development Road project, the transport corridor that would run from southern Iraq through Turkey.