Iraq calls on Turkey to ‘immediately’ withdraw troops sent over the border

Baghdad demanded Saturday the immediate withdrawal of forces it said Turkey illegally sent into Iraq, which is struggling to assert its sovereignty while receiving foreign assistance against the Islamic State group.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Saturday it was a routine troop rotation and Turkish forces had set up a camp some 30 km (19 miles) northeast of Mosul at the Mosul governor’s request, and in coordination with the Iraqi Defence Ministry.

The “troop deployment in northern Iraq serves as a deterrent” against attempts by groups including the PKK to expand their influence into Iraq, according to Mehmet Kaya, head of the Tigris Communal Research Center in Diyarbakir, a Kurdish-dominated city in southeast Turkey.

Baghdad calls deployment an incursion but Turkey’s prime minister says part of a long-running training mission. A battalion of soldiers has gone there.

Turkish soldiers in Mosul region were sent to the region two-and-a-half years ago in order to train Iraqi Peshmerga forces.

Days earlier, Mr. Abadi, who came to power past year with the strong support of the United States, made a similarly tough statement in reaction to the United States’ plans to deploy Special Operations forces to Iraq to conduct raids against Islamic State targets.

On Friday, Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency reported that about 150 soldiers and some 20 to 25 tanks had arrived in the region.

President Fuad Masum called the move a “violation of worldwide norms, laws and Iraq’s national sovereignty”, and he said it was contributing to increased tensions in the region.

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

Turkey and Kurdish autonomous zone of northern Iraqi enjoys close relations.

Mosul fell to the Islamic State group in August 2014 amid a stunning collapse of the Iraqi security forces.

It said the troops had entered Iraq without Baghdad’s consent and that Iraq considered it “a hostile act”.

Al-Abadi reiterated that foreign ground combat troops were not needed in Iraq.