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![The Turkish President said he would not allow ISIL to sow discord in Turkey [Xinhua]](http://thebricspost.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/234221072_8-e1437410885269.jpg)
The Turkish President said he would not allow ISIL to sow discord in Turkey [Xinhua]
Iraq has lodged several complaints against Turkey’s military incursion in the north of the country where the Islamic State is entrenched.
Turkey last year sent several hundred soldiers – since reinforced – and mechanized vehicles including tanks to the Yazidi town of Bashiqa, a few kilometers north of Mosul.
Ankara has maintained that it is there to train Sunni fighters opposed to the Islamic State as well as Kurdish peshmerga fighters.
On Tuesday, Erdogan said that no one can prevent Turkey from defending its borders against neighboring threats.
“Turkey cannot intervene against the threats right next to it? We will never accept this … We don’t need permission for this, and we don’t plan on getting it.”
He said that Abadi had directly insulted him.
The tension between the two neighbors escalated when the Turkish Parliament agreed to extend the military’s mandate in northern Iraq.
Turkey says it wants to be a part of the liberation of Mosul, which US and Iraqi authorities say is imminent.
The US had previously said that Turkey was not part of the planning for retaking the city seized by ISIL in 2014.
Meanwhile, the US is exerting pressure to calm both countries.
“We call on both governments to focus on their common enemy: ISIL,” Matthew Allen, a Pentagon spokesperson, told CNN on Tuesday.
Earlier, Turkish deputy prime minister Numan Kurtulmu said that the Kurdish Regional Government in northern Iraq had requested Turkey’s mililtary help in fighting terrorist elements there.
The BRICS Post with inputs from Agencies
