Erdogan: 'No one should expect me to provoke ISIS'
Turkey pursues a cautious policy while Iraq's military crisis escalates.
Turkey is maintaining an overly cautious position on developments in Iraq, and steering clear from unilateral or multilateral military actions that may aggravate the situation further.
Ankara is also trying to gauge things to come after advances in Iraq by the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), and is closely working with the United States and NATO partners on this.
Rescuing 80 Turkish citizens, including Turkey’s consul-general in Mosul, who were abducted over two weeks ago by ISIS, however, remains Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's priority.
His government placed a news blackout on the hostage crisis while Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, together with Turkey’s intelligence agency MIT, works back channels in Iraq — including Sunni tribal leaders — to secure the release of the hostages.
