Turkey withdraws some of its troops from Iraqi camp

An unspecified number of tanks also left.

Iraq’s foreign ministry said Turkish forces had entered Iraqi territory without the knowledge of Baghdad, which viewed their presence as a “hostile act”.

Turkish leaders have reassured Iraq that their troops are not there in a combat role and rather train Iraqi and Peshmerga forces.

Erdogan also commented on Russia’s proposal to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to issue a statement against Turkey’s deployment of Turkish troops, saying “the UNSC rejected the proposal, we will follow the process regarding the incident”.

Turkey is withdrawing a part of its tank battalion from Iraq, the Anadolu Agency has reported.

The deployment of the Turkish troops – who moved from Iraq’s Kurdish region to Bashiqa last week – angered the Iraqi government, which said the Turkish troops had not been invited and should leave.

Turkish military sources say they are moving north.

On Dec. 4 approximately 150 Turkish soldiers and 20 to 25 tanks were deployed to replace the training units already in the area leading to tensions between Ankara and Baghdad.

Thousands of Shiite militiamen and supporters rallied against the presence of Turkish troops in Iraqi territory and demanded their immediate withdraw from the area, a show of strength by the country’s powerful militias and the Shiite political rivals of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi.

The crisis between the two countries sparked last Friday when reports said a Turkish training battalion equipped with armored vehicles was deployed near the city of Mosul to train Iraqi paramilitary groups in fighting the Islamic State (IS) group.

He subsequently said that an agreement had been reached on a “reorganisation” of the Turkish troops, but it was never made clear what form this would take.