© REUTERS/ Khalil Ashawi
Turkey and Iran have agreed to boost military ties following the referendum in the Iraqi Kurdistan where more than 90 percent of voters supported the idea of independence from Iraq.
Turkish and Iranian chiefs of staff of the armed forces held a meeting on Monday in Tehran and agreed to expand military cooperation between the two countries, local media reported.
According to Tasnim News Agency, the sides agreed to expand the cooperation in training, holding war games and the exchange of experience.
Ankara and Tehran also discussed possibilities of military cooperation to assist Muslims in Myanmar and other countries, the media outlet said citing Iranian Maj. Gen. Mohammad Hossein Baqeri.
"We held talks on the common threats to the two countries (Iran and Turkey), and also on the (independence) referendum in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region with an emphasis on the maintenance of Iraq's integrity and rejection of the referendum," Baqeri said.
Turkish Chief of Staff Gen. Hulusi Akar, on his part, said that Ankara and Tehran had reached agreements on the fight against terrorism and border security and noted the friendly character of bilateral relations.The talks of the chiefs of staff took place a few days before Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's planned visit to Iran, where a joint response to the recent independence referendum in Iraqi Kurdistan will be discussed. On October 4, Erdogan is expected to hold talks with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei.
Comment: Israel's overt support - and the US's covert support - for the Kurdish referendum have backfired and driven strong regional power Iran and Turkey into each others' arms. And the statements mentioned in the above article are being backed up with
action on the ground:
Iran says its military has held a joint military drill with the Iraqi armed forces amid tensions over a recent referendum on independence in Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region.
The Iranian military announced on its website on October 2 joint military exercises in the country's western border area with units of the Iraqi Army involving armor and artillery units as well as other air units.
In its report about the exercises, the semiofficial ISNA news agency quoted the commander of the ground forces of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), Mohammad Pakpour, as saying that "Iran and Iraq have common enemies and they need to ensure the security of their own borders against threats."
Meanwhile, an official in Iraq's Kurdish region said that Iraqi and Iranian units began exercises at 11 a.m. local time "only 250 meters from the border."
"Iraqi forces are dressed in black and there is a large number of Iranian forces," said Shwan Abu Bakr, the customs chief at the Bashmakh border post between Iraq's Kurdish region and Iran.
[...]
On September 30, Iranian armed forces spokesman Masoud Jazayeri told reporters that the exercises would be held "in the coming days along the shared border."
Jazayeri said the decision to carry out the drills followed a high-level meeting of Iranian commanders where "the territorial integrity and unity of Iraq and the illegitimacy of the independence referendum in northern Iraq were stressed again."
Iraqi soldiers last week also took part in a Turkish military drill close to Iraq's frontier.
Comment: Israel's overt support - and the US's covert support - for the Kurdish referendum have backfired and driven strong regional power Iran and Turkey into each others' arms. And the statements mentioned in the above article are being backed up with action on the ground: