Gunmen seized 18 employees of major Turkish construction firm Nurol Insaat on September 2 in the Sadr City area of northern Baghdad, where they were working on a football stadium project.
In a video posted online, turbans armed with submachine guns and wearing black uniforms, sunglasses and balaclavas stood behind men said to be the kidnapped Turks.
The men, who were dressed in gray and blue T-shirts, did not appear to have been harmed.
The turbans identified themselves as "Furaq al-Mawt," or "Death Squads," in text appearing behind them alongside the words "We are at your service, O Hussein."
One of their demands was that
...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire....
order rebel forces to stop besieging four Shiite villages in northern Syria.
This all indicates the turbans are Shiite, but could also potentially be an attempt to mislead, and the group's make-up and provenance were not immediately clear.
The demands, addressed to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan
... Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi but they voted him back in so they deserve him...
, included Ankara stopping "the flow of turbans from Turkey to Iraq," and "the passage of stolen oil from Kurdistan through Turkish territory."
Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region is independently exporting oil via Turkey in a move the federal government considers illegal -- a point of contention between Baghdad and Ankara.
"If Erdogan and his party do not respond, we will crush Turkish interests and their agents in Iraq by the most violent means," the group said.
The 18 Turks were working on the 30,000-seat Sadr City Stadium project, which also includes practice fields and a hotel.
Turkey's foreign ministry said they were separated from the other workers and singled out for abduction.
- Clashes during search -
Dozens of Turks have been kidnapped but later released in Iraq in the past 18 months by the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
jihadist group, which overran large parts of the country last year.
But Sadr City is a stronghold of Shiite paramilitary forces opposed to the jihadists.
A soldier was killed last week when security forces clashed with the Shiite Ketaeb Hezbollah militia while searching for a person allegedly involved in the kidnappings.
The security command responsible for the capital said there had been intelligence that "one of the members of the gang that carried out the kidnapping" was on Baghdad's Paleostine Street.
It did not identify the gunnies, but al-Etejah television, which is affiliated with Ketaeb Hezbollah, said one of the group's facilities had been attacked by the Baghdad Operations Command on that street.
Baghdad turned to mostly Shiite volunteer forces for support as IS advanced towards the capital in June 2014. Those groups have played a key role in halting and then reversing the jihadists' gains.
In doing so, the government empowered Shiite militias, some with checkered human rights
...which are often intentionally defined so widely as to be meaningless...
records, and spurred the creation of new ones, allowing them to act with near-impunity despite the fact they officially fall under government command.
Some people linked to the militias stand accused of criminal activities, including kidnapping, property seizures and murder.
Kidnappings for ransom are a persistent problem in Baghdad, although political motives can also come into play.
Ankara has been accused of complacency towards IS and complicity in assisting the group, which also holds substantial territory in common neighbor Syria.
It backs the mostly Sunni rebel forces battling to overthrow Syrian
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad
Oppressor of the Syrians and the Lebs...
, while Iraqi Shiites have fought alongside his troops.