Türkiye Set to Hand Bashiqa Base to Iraq as PKK Pressure Mounts

Türkiye will start taking the steps needed to gradually transfer the Bashiqa-Zilkan facility near Mosul to the Iraqi federal government, the two countries said in a joint statement on Nov. 8. The announcement marks the formal start of a handover that Baghdad has demanded for years.

Alongside the transfer, both sides agreed to activate a Joint Security Coordination Committee to monitor what the statement called the complete termination of PKK's presence in the region. The deal builds on a Sept. 23 meeting between President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi in New York, held on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly. Back then, officials tied the process to Iraqi armed forces establishing security in Sinjar, signaling the pullout would stretch over a long period.

Turkish officials have framed the agreement with Baghdad as a critical piece of the wider effort to secure the PKK's disarmament. Sinjar, sitting along the Iraqi-Syrian border, has long worried Ankara because of the group's presence there and its ability to coordinate across both countries. The PKK has also used the Qandil-Makhmur-Sinjar corridor to keep its regional operations running.

Bashiqa has been a flashpoint in Ankara-Baghdad ties since Turkish troops arrived in 2015. Türkiye said it deployed under an arrangement with the Kurdish regional government to train local forces battling ISIL, but Baghdad rejected the move as a violation of Iraqi sovereignty. The base was attacked by ISIL in 2017 and by Iran-backed armed groups in 2021.

Turkish troops stayed after ISIL's territorial defeat and used the facility to coordinate operations against the PKK in Iraq. Under a 2024 memorandum on military and security cooperation and counterterrorism, the two countries agreed to set up a joint training and cooperation center at Bashiqa. That memorandum also put the base's management under the Iraqi armed forces, laying the ground for the gradual transfer now beginning.