Baku, Azerbaijan, June 24
By Rufiz Hafizoglu - Trend:
The culprit of the situation in Iraq is the country's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, according to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
"West has always turned a blind eye to Maliki's repression policy directed against Sunni Muslims, as well as other political forces," Erdogan said, according to the Turkish TV channel TRT Haber.
"Some 98 percent of the Iraqi army is Shiite, and this proves that the Sunnis were oppressed by Maliki's government," Erdogan said.
On June 10, the militants of the terrorist group known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL a.k.a ISIS), supported by the banned Iraqi Ba'ath Party [the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party], seized the administrative center of the city of 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 ISIL militants took control over the Iraqi town of Tal Afar on June 16.
The city's military airport also came under the control of the ISIL militants on June 22.
Edited by CN