Iraqi president says Turkish deployment inside Iraq violates international law

But Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said the troop rotation was routine and that Turkish forces had set up a camp near Mosul nearly a year ago in coordination with Iraqi authorities.

The Turkish forces have been helping train Sunni former Iraqi police officers and Sunni former Iraqi soldiers, who fled the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, to fight ISIS.

The Turkish deployment was not part of the US-led efforts against the IS, officials in Washington said.

According to the KRG, the fresh deployments of Turkish military equipment and experts were meant to replace a unit already deployed in northern Iraq.

Some 600 Turkish soldiers and 25 tanks have been sent to Bashiqa in northern Iraq.

However, on Sunday Davutoglu was reduced to saying that Turkey would cease further troop transfers to Bashiqa out of respect for Iraq’s sovereignty.

On Tuesday, the U.S. said it was deploying a new force of special operations troops to Iraq to conduct raids against Isil there and in neighbouring Syria, ratcheting up its campaign against the group.

The Islamic State group took control of Mosul in June 2014, and the city has since become a key center of the group’s self-proclaimed caliphate.

The Baghdad administration led by Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said it would appeal to the UN Security Council if Turkey failed to withdraw its troops within 48 hours.

“We call on the Turkish authorities to withdraw its military force from Iraqi territories and not repeating such an incident that hurt the relations between the two neighboring countries”, Masum said.

Video released on the website of Turkey’s pro-government Yeni Safak newspaper showed flatbed trucks carrying armored vehicles along a road at night, describing them as a convoy accompanying the Turkish troops to Bashiqa.

“Our solidarity is with Iraq”, said Davutoglu.

Sunni fighters in Nineveh and the western Anbar province say the Shiite-dominated government has failed to provide them with the support and weaponry needed to defeat the Islamic State.

Earlier, Iraqi President Fuad Masoum rejected the Turkish move as a violation of worldwide law and Iraqi sovereignty.

Turkey has been providing training to Kurdish forces in three different locations throughout the autonomous Kurdish region in agreement with the Kurdistan Regional Government. The heads of powerful Iranian-backed militias have said they are willing to fight any new American troops in Iraq, as they did during the long American occupation after 2003.