Kidnapped workers: Turkish MPs head to Baghdad

ISTANBUL

Turkey’s Republican People's Party (CHP) deputies arrived in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad on Saturday to monitor rescue efforts for 18 kidnapped Turkish workers, official sources said.

On Wednesday, men in military uniform reportedly abducted 18 Turkish citizens, including 14 workers, three engineers and an accountant after raiding a construction site of a Turkish company, Nurol Holding, in Sadr city, a Baghdad suburb.

Deputies Mahmut Tanal, Ahmet Akin and Tahsin Tarhan were said to be in Baghdad to contribute in the ongoing rescue efforts for the Turkish citizens.

Turkey's envoy to Baghdad, Faruk Kaymakci, was keeping the deputies informed about the issue.

Iraq's Youth and Sports Minister, Abdul-Hussein Abtan and Interior minister Mohammed Salem Al-Ghabban also spoke with the deputies about the kidnapping incident.

“We will do our best for our brothers,” Akin told media at the Ataturk International Airport in Istanbul before leaving for Baghdad earlier on Saturday.

“Our aim is to bring good news. There is no information on who abducted them. I hope it will be clear after we go and work there,” Tarhan said at the airport.

The kidnapping of 18 Turkish workers in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad is neither the work of Daesh nor PKK, according to Turkish Foreign Minister Feridun Sinirlioglu.

"What we know is that it is not [the work of] one of the terrorist organizations that we are all familiar with; it is not Daesh or PKK," Sinirlioglu told the media at the Turkish parliament on Thursday.