"Turkey biggest enemy of Iraq"

The Turkish captives appeared in a video days after their abduction, apparently held by an armed group that used a familiar Shiite Muslim slogan and threatened to attack Turkish interests in Iraq if its demands were not met.

It is not clear if the gunmen belong to an established group. Iraqi security forces investigating the Turks’ abduction raided the Baghdad headquarters of Kataib Hezbollah, another Shi’ite militia, but without result.

Qais al-Khazali, head of Asaib, said the group was not behind the kidnapping, but he echoed demands made of Ankara in the ransom video to stop the passage of militants from Turkey to Iraq, cut the flow of oil from Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region, and order the lifting of a siege on two Shi’ite villages in northwest Syria.

“The Turks – the Turkish intelligence – are the ones who ease the entrance of large numbers of Daesh (so-called Islamic State), including suicide bombers, from Turkey to Syria and from Syria to Iraq, killing Iraqis by hundreds and thousands,” he said in an interview with Iraqi state television.

Thousands of foreign fighters have crossed through Turkey to join self-proclaimed Islamic State over the past few years, fuelling accusations from the government’s opponents that it was turning a blind eye.

“The biggest enemy of Iraq now is Turkey, and this enemy is the first and one of the biggest benefactors of Iraq’s riches,” Khazali said, apparently referencing oil smuggled by Islamic State or sold by the Kurdistan Regional Government via a pipeline to the Turkish port of Ceyhan.

He said Turkey played a more negative role in the region than Saudi Arabia or Qatar, Sunni Gulf Arab states which Iraqi Shi’ite politicians have accused of funding ISIS insurgents.

Two of the 18 Turkish hostages were released in good health on Tuesday in the southern city of Basra, but the others remain missing.

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