"Turkey has set up a military airbase in Iraq which is located in al-Emadiyeh near the city of Dahuk in the Iraqi Kurdistan region," the sources said on Saturday.
Earlier reports also said that Turkey is building an airbase in Northern Iraq without the knowledge of the central government in Baghdad.
Images taken by field sources in Iraq displayed construction of an illegal airbase named 'Bamerne' by the Turkish army in Northern Iraq.
The reports said that the airbase was being built at the geographical coordinates of 37°05′52″N and 43°15′58″E which corresponds to a region in Dahuk, Northern Iraq.
Tensions between Turkey and Iraq appear to be at boiling point after the Iraqi prime minister condemned Ankara’s participation in retaking the ISIL-held city of Mosul.
The Turkish president had previously told the Iraqi prime minister “to know his limits”.
"We will liberate our land through the determination of our men and not by video calls," Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi tweeted late on Tuesday night.
The mocking message was an apparent reference to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's appearance via a nationally broadcast video call to a TV reporter amid a failed coup attempt in July.
Earlier on Tuesday, Erdogan said that Turkish forces must take part in the much-anticipated operation to retake the Iraqi city of Mosul, currently held by the ISIL terrorists.
The Turkish leader then drove his point home in even stronger terms.
"The Iraqi prime minister is insulting me, first know your limits," he told a gathering of Islamic leaders in Istanbul.
"You are not my interlocutor, you are not at my level, you are not my equivalent, you are not of the same quality as me," Erdogan said, addressing al-Abadi's criticism of the Turkish military
presence on Iraq's territory. "Your screaming and shouting in Iraq is of no importance to us. You should know that we will go our own way."
Turkey-Iraq relations have been at an impasse since last December, when Ankara deployed troops to the region of Bashiqa, Northeast of Mosul, with a stated goal of anti-ISIL training.
SA - 12