[JURIST] Iraqi government officials ordered Turkey on Saturday to withdraw hundreds of troops deployed near Mosul, the largest city currently controlled by Islamic State (IS) [BBC backgrounder; JURIST news archive] militants. Iraqi President Fouad Massoum stated that the deployment was a “violation of international norms and law” and may be considered a hostile act [WSJ report], as it was done without notifying the country’s central government. Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu [official profile, PDF] defended [Reuters report] the deployment, stating that their military camp was established with the consent of Mosul’s governor and the Iraq Defense Ministry. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi stated [press release] earlier this week that the Iraqi government prohibits the deployment of any foreign troops without their approval. He stressed that Iraq prefers for foreign powers to provide air support, weapons, ammunition and training rather than directly intervene in the offense against the Islamic State. US President Barack Obama has expressed that he plans to send troops [RT report] to the region, but the US has not commented on whether the Iraqi prime minister’s statement will alter US deployment strategy.

IS recently claimed responsibility for a series of coordinated attacks in Paris [JURIST report] that killed more than 120 individuals. Last month President Obama ordered [JURIST report] an assessment of whether intelligence reports from US Central Command (Centcom) [official website] were changed by supervisory military personnel before formal submission to present a more optimistic picture of the American military campaign against the IS. In September members of Iraq’s Yazidi community met with International Criminal Court Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and urged the court to open a genocide investigation [JURIST report] into IS actions in Northern Iraq. Also in September France launched its first airstrikes [JURIST report] against an IS training camp in Syria and acknowledged that combating IS is now the main objective in both Iraq and Syria.