Baghdad described their presence as a hostile act, saying Turkey had entered without the knowledge of the Iraqi government.
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The Iraqi Foreign Ministry summoned the Turkish ambassador on Saturday to demand an immediate withdrawal of the troops, Baghdad officials said in a statement.
Baghdad said the deployment was done without consultation and was a violation of national sovereignty.
Khaled al-Obeidi said in a statement that he dismissed the Turkish defense minister’s explanation that the deployment as necessary to protect Turkish military advisers training Iraqi forces at a camp near Mosul.
Turkish newspaper Hurriyet said that Ankara was “establishing a base in the Bashiqa region of Mosul with 600 soldiers”.
Turkish soldiers should be already stationed in the autonomous Kurdish region, to train the nestled fighters, the Turkish news agency Anadolu reported.
BAGHDAD, Dec 6 (Reuters) – Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said on Sunday his country might turn to the United Nations security council if Turkish troops sent to northern Iraq were not withdrawn within 48 hours. He also said the forces were too large for their stated mission.
But Turkey’s relationship with the Iraqi Kurds has been complicated by their new offensive against Kurdish militants in Syria – something which has also prompted sovereignty complaints from Iraq in the past. “This is a part of that training”, one senior Turkish official said.
“It has trained more than 2,000 of our Mosul brothers, contributing to the freeing of Mosul from the ISIL terrorist organization”, he said.
Mosul fell to the extremists in June 2014 amid a stunning collapse of Iraqi security forces.
A small number of Turkish trainers was already at the camp to train the Hashid Watani [national mobilisation], a force made up of mainly Sunni Arab Iraqi former police and volunteers from Mosul.
Turkey claims the Russian warplane violated its airspace but Moscow and even some US officials say the Russian plane was over Syrian air space when it was shot down.
It is seen as a counterweight to Shi’ite militias that have grown in clout elsewhere in Iraq with Iranian backing, and was formed by former Nineveh governor Atheel al-Nujaifi, who has close relations with Turkey.
“About 100 troops are now based in the vicinity of Mosul to provide training to the Kurdish Peshmerga fighters”, Bapir added, pointing out “the estimated number of these troops could reach 3000”.
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Moscow has accused Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and his family of benefiting from the illegal smuggling of oil from Islamic State-held territory in Syria and Iraq, a charge Ankara vehemently denies.
