The Iraqi government has asked Turkey to withdraw troops it sent to an area near the northern city of Mosul.
In a statement, Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi’s office said that the move is a “serious breach of Iraqi sovereignty”.
About 150 Turkish soldiers have been deployed near the town of Bashiqa to train Iraqi Kurdish forces.
Mosul has been under the control of the Islamic State (ISIS) group since last year.
But the statement called on Turkey to “respect good neighbourly relations and to withdraw immediately from the Iraqi territory”.
A Turkish security official said the troops had been in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq on a training mission since last year.
A senior Kurdish military officer based on the Bashiqa front-line, north of Mosul, said additional Turkish trainers had arrived at a camp in the area overnight on Thursday escorted by a Turkish protection force.
He said he was not aware of the size of the force and refused to speculate.
The camp is used by a force called Hashid Watani (national mobilisation), which is made up of mainly Sunni Arab former Iraqi police and volunteers from Mosul.
It was formed by former governor, Atheel al-Nujaifi, who is close to Turkey. There was already a small number of Turkish trainers there before this latest deployment.
“Our soldiers are already in Iraq. A battalion of soldiers has gone there. Training was already being given in that region for the last two to three years. This is a part of that training,” a senior Turkish official said.
In Washington, two US Defence Officials said on Friday that the United States was aware of Turkey’s deployment of hundreds of Turkish soldiers to northern Iraq, but the move was not part of the US-led coalition’s activities.
