Driving an explosives-laden auto, the bomber rammed the vehicle into a checkpoint outside the headquarters of border security in the town of An Nukhayb, 100km from the border with Saudi Arabia, officials said.
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“What they do in Bashiqa and at the camp is training”, Erdogan told a news conference in Ankara late on Thursday.
Ankara claims that its troops have been deployed in northern Iraq to train Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga fighters against the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group, and that the move was in line with previous agreements with the Baghdad government.
The Iraqi Foreign Ministry said Turkish forces had entered Iraqi territory without the knowledge of Baghdad, which viewed their presence as a “hostile act”.
The rallies were organised and led by militia groups, which have threatened to use force against Turkey unless it withdraws.
“During a visit to Turkey in 2014, [Iraqi PM Haider al-] Abadi demanded [Turkish troops] for training”, Erdogan said.
In Baghdad, Reuters reporters saw angry protesters.
Several thousand protesters, a lot of them members of Shia paramilitary forces, gathered in central Baghdad on Saturday to demand the withdrawal of Turkish troops from Iraq.
“We can target Turkish soldiers and coming days will prove it”.
“Iraq is the “sick man” of the region”, Qarawee said.
“This is more important than the other protests”, Ali said.
The row has badly soured relations and saw the Turkish ambassador to Iraq summoned on December 5 to demand that Turkey immediately withdraw hundreds of troops deployed near the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)-controlled city of Mosul.
The Turkish government has already missed a deadline set by Iraq to pull out the troops from Bashiqa, prompting Baghdad to threaten to follow the case through the United Nations Security Council.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday that a complaint lodged by Iraq’s government to the U.N. Security Council about the presence of Turkish forces in the country was not an honest step.
Al-Hakim made clear that bilateral diplomacy had so far failed to end the dispute between the neighbors.
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“Sending Turkish armed forces without the permission of the Iraqi government is not considered a help against terrorism, but instead a blatant violation of Iraq’s sovereignty”.
