This is while previously the Iraqi authorities accused Turkey of military invasion and demanded the Turkish troops to leave the country.
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Turkish troops were in Iraq to protect against a possible attack from Islamic State and those who interpreted their presence differently were involved in “deliberate provocation”, Davutoglu said in a speech to his party in parliament.
Cavusoglu stressed that Turkish soldiers were in Iraq simply to train and advise Iraqi forces, and that the Turkish military has been operating in the region in line with the request and knowledge of the Iraqi government from the very beginning.
“It is our duty to provide security for our soldiers providing training there”, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said in an interview on Turkey’s Kanal 24 television.
According to the statement, Abadi told Steinmeier that “the deployment of Turkish troops inside Iraqi territory is rejected, as it happened without authorization by the Iraqi government, which considered a breach to Iraqi sovereignty”.
“The military personnel for training will stay”. “The advisers are another issue; there are advisers from a number of countries and we accepted the principle of advisers, but not the principle of ground forces entering Iraqi territory”.
“We expect them to remain”, the official told a group of foreign media representatives in Istanbul. “The discussion with the central government still continues”. With tensions high following the shootdown of a Russian warplane by Turkish forces in November, the introduction of more troops threatens to add more instability to the volatile region. It has come under pressure from the United States to play a more active role, particularly in Syria.
Turkey’s limited training presence is part of the regional coalition against the Islamic State, and it was put in place with Baghdad’s consent.
Russian President Vladimir Putin described the act as “a stab in the back” by terrorist supporters and accused Turkey of involvement in the illegal oil deals with IS.
Iraqi Defence Minister Khaled al-Obeidi said he told his Turkish counterpart the latest deployment had been made without informing or coordinating with Baghdad, and should be withdrawn.
The camp occupied by the Turkish troops is being used by a force called Hashid Watani, or national mobilisation, made up of mainly Sunni Arab former Iraqi police and volunteers from Mosul.
The official said the new deployment last week included 150 to 300 soldiers backed by 20 tanks near a base in Basiqa, some 30 kilometres (18 miles) north of Mosul, which was seized by IS in June 2014.
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Although Turkey is strongly suspicious of Kurds in Syria, it has good relations with Iraq’s Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani.
