Turkey to reopen Mosul consulate: Erdogan

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan greets his supporters as he leaves from a mosque following the Friday prayers in Ankara, Turkey, on Friday, August 3, 2018. (REUTERS)

• The consulates general in Mosul and (the southern Iraqi city) of Basra will resume operations within 100 days
• Turkey evacuated the Basra consulate for security reasons in 2014 a week after Daesh seized the Mosul mission

ANKARA: Turkey is set to open a consulate in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, four years after it was seized and its employees held hostage by Daesh, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday.
Ankara had opened a well-staffed consulate in Mosul before the rise of Daesh there and in neighboring Syria.
But 46 Turks, including diplomats, their children, special forces officers and other Turkish employees were taken hostage by the militants in June 2014. The hostages were freed in September 2014 after a three-month ordeal.
Symbolically, the consulate building was destroyed in a US-led coalition airstrike in April 2016 carried out in coordination with Ankara. The city was retaken by Iraqi forces in June 2017.
“The consulates general in Mosul and (the southern Iraqi city) of Basra will resume operations within 100 days,” Erdogan told a meeting on government plans after his June 24 election victory.
Turkish officials had previously indicated Ankara was keen to reopen the consulate in Mosul but this was the first mention that a time frame has been evoked.
Turkey evacuated the Basra consulate for security reasons in 2014 a week after Daesh seized the Mosul mission.
The circumstances in which the Mosul consulate staff were freed remain murky, with reports at the time indicating they had been released in exchange for Daesh militants held by Turkey.
Erdogan, then premier, insisted no ransom had been paid, saying there were “only diplomatic and political negotiations” and describing the outcome as “a diplomatic victory.”
The former Turkish consul general in Mosul who was kidnapped with the other Turks, Ozturk Yilmaz, went into politics and became a deputy chairman of the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) and is its main spokesman on foreign affairs.