Baghdad demanded Saturday the immediate withdrawal of forces it said Turkey illegally deployed in Iraq, which is struggling to assert its sovereignty while receiving foreign assistance against ISIS.
AFP reports that a senior officer from the Kurdish forces in the region - which are allied to Ankara - downplayed the deployment as a routine training rotation but a Turkish paper said it was part of deal to set up a permanent base.
Facing major political pressure as a result of statements by American officials, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has taken an increasingly hard public line on foreign forces in Iraq over the past week, terming the deployment of ground combat forces a "hostile act."
Major General Nureddin Herki, the commander of Kurdish Peshmerga forces in the area, said the newly-arrived Turkish troops were part of a routine rotation in a training programme accompanied by a protection force that has since returned to Turkey.
