ERDOGAN ABHORS A VACUUM: Turkey says its troops to stay in Iraq until Islamic State cleared from Mosul.

The United States on Tuesday urged the two governments to resolve the spat, which could affect the planned U.S.-backed assault on Mosul, the headquarters of Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate in northern Iraq since 2014.

“Turkey does not move on orders from others … Turkey’s presence in the Bashiqa camp will remain until Mosul is rid of Daesh,” Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus told the state-run Anadolu Agency, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

“Whoever the Mosul population is, Arabs or Turkmen, they have lived together for centuries and will continue to do so. If you change the ethnic structure here, the people there will not allow it … This is our perspective as Turkey. Turkey’s force in the region cannot be questioned,” he said.

Following Obama’s “red line” fiasco, the U.S. doesn’t have enough standing left in the region to settle much of anything.