Baku, Azerbaijan, June 19
Trend:
There are still 4,000 Turkish citizens in Iraq after the Turkish foreign ministry urged its citizens to leave Iraq, Turkish news agency Anadolu reported on June 19.
More than 7,000 Turkish citizens have left the territory of Iraq by Turkish Airlines aircraft in the last week.
Earlier, it was reported that some 125,000 Turkish citizens were in Iraq before the "Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant" militants intensified.
On June 10, the ISIL militants, supported by the banned Iraqi Ba'ath Party [the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party], captured the administrative center of the Mosul in the northern Iraqi Province of Ninawa, a number of small settlements, as well as part of the Salah al Din Province, including its center - the city of Tikrit.
The militants began controlling the Iraqi town of Tal Afar, densely populated by Turkmen, on June 16.