Erdogan has warned Iraq that Turkey will "clean up" a refugee camp that it says provides a safe haven for Kurdish elements, threatening to take its long military campaign deeper inside Iraqi territory.
Erdogan claimed Makhmour, a camp 180 km south of the Turkish border that has hosted thousands of Turkish refugees for more than two decades, was an "incubator" for elements and must be tackled.
"If the United Nations does not clean it up, we will do it as a UN member," Erdogan said.
"How long are we supposed to be patient about it?" he told Turkish state broadcaster TRT in an interview.
A senior Iraqi official told Reuters that Turkey complained last week to Baghdad about "terrorist activities launched by the PKK from their camp in Makhmour against Turkey".
The camp was established in the 1990s when thousands of Kurds from Turkey crossed the border in a movement Ankara says was deliberately provoked by the PKK.
HJ/FNA14000312000761/PR
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