Turkey and Iraq have disagreed considerably on Turkey’s military presence in northern Iraq recently. First, Iraqi prime minister Haider al-Abadi said that the presence of Turkish forces near Mosul is “illegal.” Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan then escalated the war of words, saying “The Iraqi prime minister is insulting me. First, know your limits. You are not in my quality, my level,” before declaring his country’s forces would indeed enter the Daesh (ISIS)-occupied city.
Abadi then took it to another level himself, and slammed Erdogan for the remarks, poking fun at his Skype address to his country during Turkey's coup attempt in July.
To @RT_Erdogan: we are not your enemy and we will liberate our land through the determination of our men and not by video calls pic.twitter.com/EAX8V6sIMR
— Haider Al-Abadi (@HaiderAlAbadi) October 11, 2016
Twitter is now having a lot of fun with the cyberfight between the two. Many celebrated Abadi’s comments, or reacted to them with astonishment.
Troll game#Iraq's PM Abadi to Erdoğan: "We will liberate our land through the determination of our men and not by video calls." Ouchpic.twitter.com/6APltfNuRY
— Haidar Sumeri (@IraqiSecurity) October 11, 2016
SHOTS FIRED: Abadi reminds Erdogan that at one point, Recep was trying to run the country in hiding via video call. https://t.co/ea772V3mnV
— Serge (@Zinvor) October 11, 2016
Will be fun to watch Erdogan have to back down after all that tough talk, especially after Abadi hit him with the facetime commenthttps://t.co/JwDieRMHyb
— Gissur Simonarson (@GissiSim) October 11, 2016
In Arabic, plenty of accounts celebrated Abadi’s quick whip too, and the Arabic-language hashtag “Erdogan the one who Skypes” is trending, referring again to Erdogan’s use of the video calling service during the July coup.
تطاول #اردوغان على #العبادي هي ليست
— باهض الربيعي (@Bahed_Alrubaie) October 11, 2016
اهانه لل #العبادي فحسب بل اهانه للعراق
لأن #العبادي_يمثل_العراق شئنا أم أبينا
توحدوا
#erdogan_is_isis
Erdogan's trangressions are not an insult to Abadi, but an insult to Iraq because Abadi represents Iraq. Unite.
Operations to take Mosul from Daesh (ISIS) are expected to begin this month or soon after.
AL
