Turkey has consistently claimed the troops were deployed in order to train local Kurdish Peshmerga forces adding that the move complied with previous agreements between Ankara and Baghdad.
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“Iraq worked on containment of this issue by diplomatic means and bilateral talks, but these efforts did not succeed in convincing Turkey to withdraw its occupying forces from Iraqi territory”, Alhakim wrote to Power, noting that the Turkish incursion was an “aggressive act”.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said Turkey will not pull out troops already stationed in Iraq.
Turkey has had soldiers in Iraq since past year, but the arrival of more troops last week was not received well by Baghdad.
The Turkish leader said a trilateral meeting, gathering officials from Turkey, the United States and the Kurdish Regional Government in Iraq, would take place on December 21. Iraq, however, denies any such deal.
In Baghdad, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi instructed his foreign ministry to lodge a formal complaint at the U.N. Security Council over the presence of the Turkish forces.
In Baghdad, Reuters reporters saw angry protesters trample on the Turkish flag and hit a caricature of Erdoğan with slippers in a mark of disrespect.
Baghdad says Ankara deployed the troops without its permission and has appealed to the United Nations Security Council to call for their immediate withdrawal.
“This is a flagrant violation of the provisions and principles of the U.N. Charter and in violation of the sanctity of Iraqi territory”, a statement from his office said.
Earlier, Iraq’s top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, urged the government to show “no tolerance” for any infringement of the country’s sovereignty.
Erdogan said: “Withdrawal is out of the question for the time being”.
“What they do in Bashiqa and at the camp is training”, Erdogan told a news conference in Ankara late on Thursday.
A number of Iraqi military and political figures – including former prime minister and current lawmaker, Nouri al-Maliki, and the commander of Iraq’s Popular Mobilizations Forces, Hadi al-Ameri – were present in the rally.
“Turkish troops in Mosul are not there as combatants; they are trainers”.
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Iraq on Friday circulated a letter among the members of the UN Security Council to express “growing alarm” that the problem was not being resolved.
