Turkey widens travel warning list to 15 Iraq provinces

Turkey has updated its travel warning for Iraq, increasing the number of Iraqi provinces where Turkish citizens may face security problems, from seven to 15.

Anbar, Baghdad, Basra, Diyala, Mosul, Kirkuk and Salahaddin were already listed by the Foreign Ministry as provinces that Turkish citizens should avoid travelling through.

“Negative propaganda, based on some groundless claims against our country, along with some other countries, has been spread particularly in the southern provinces that are dominated mostly by Shiites,” the Foreign Ministry noted in a written statement released June 18.

“In light of the recent developments, and due to the fact that security problems have spread into a wider area of Iraq, eight more in the south of Baghdad [that includes] Babil, Najaf, Karbala, Wasit, Maysan, al-Qadisiyyah, al-Muthanna and Dhi Qar” have been added to the list.

Davutoğlu meets Iraqi, Qatari and Saudi ministers

According to diplomatic sources, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu met with his colleagues from Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Qatar in Jeddah on June 18 on the sidelines of the Islamic Cooperation Organization meeting. Davutoğlu demanded that Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari provide additional security for the Turkish Embassy in Baghdad in the face of growing security concerns. He also discussed the worsening security situation across Iraq and the abduction of 80 Turkish citizens, including its consul-general, Öztürk Yıldırım.

Sources could not confirm whether 15 more Turkish workers had been abducted by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and said there were claims that another four Turkish citizens had also been kidnapped. They said there was no...