Iraq's foreign minister said on Monday Türkiye had agreed to take back Turkish citizens from among thousands of ISIS detainees transferred to Iraq from Syria when camps and prisons there were shut in recent weeks.
Iraq took in the detainees in an operation arranged with the United States after Kurdish forces retreated and shut down camps and prisons which had housed ISIS suspects for nearly a decade.
Baghdad has said it will try suspects on terrorism charges in its own legal system, but it has also repeatedly called on other countries to take back their citizens from among the detainees.
Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein told US envoy Tom Barrack in a meeting that Iraq was in talks with other countries on the repatriation of their nationals, and had reached an agreement with Türkiye.
In a separate statement to the UN Human Rights Council, Hussein said: "We would call the states across the world to recover their citizens who've been involved in terrorist acts so that they be tried in their countries of origin."
The fate of the suspected ISIS fighters, as well as thousands of women and children associated with the group, has become an urgent issue since the Kurdish force guarding them collapsed in the face of a Syrian government offensive.
At the height of its power from 2014-2017, ISIS held swathes of Syria and Iraq, ruling over millions of people and attracting fighters from other countries. Its rule collapsed after military campaigns by regional governments and a US-led coalition.
