BAGHDAD (Dispatches) -- Turkey has agreed to gradually withdraw its troops from the Bashiqa-Zelikan military base near Mosul in northern Iraq and hand control to the Baghdad government, while keeping its other bases in the country intact.
The announcement was made in a joint statement issued by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi following their meeting on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York on Thursday.
“In light of the progress Iraq has achieved through security measures, Turkish forces will gradually hand over the Bashiqa-Zelikan camp to the Iraqi federal government, in accordance with the agreed-upon mechanism and timeline,” the statement said.
In return, Baghdad has agreed to disarm an Izadi self-defense group with links to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), designated by Turkey as a terrorist organization, from the northwestern region of Sinjar.
The Sinjar Resistance Units (YBS) was established by the PKK to help Izadis defend themselves after the Daesh terrorist group captured the Izadi ancestral heartland of Sinjar and went on to slaughter thousands of Izadi men and boys and abduct girls to be used as sex slaves in August 2014.
Back then, Daesh enjoyed support from Turkey and the Kurdistan Regional Government, led by Masoud Barzani, who reportedly wished to ethnically cleanse Sinjar of Izadis to incorporate the region into a future independent Kurdish state.
Baghdad plans to incorporate eligible Izadi militants from the YBS into the Iraqi army.
Turkey maintained a military presence at the Bashiqa base in 2015 using the Daesh occupation of nearby Mosul as a pretext, refusing repeated Iraqi requests to withdraw its troops since then. 
Ankara will continue to occupy several other bases in northern Iraq for operations against the PKK, which has bases in the Qandil mountains in northeast Iraq, despite ongoing peace negotiations with the group.