Iraq's top Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani on Friday criticized the deployment of Turkish troops and tanks to the country's north without Baghdad's approval, AFP reports.
Baghdad has demanded that Ankara remove the newly-deployed forces, which were sent to a base near the city of Mosul in northern Iraq, but Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said a withdrawal was "out of the question."
No country should "send its soldiers to the territory of another state under the pretext of supporting it in fighting terrorism without the conclusion of an agreement... between the governments of the two countries," Sistani said in remarks delivered by a representative at Friday weekly prayers.