REUTERS

President Tayyip Erdogan has warned Iraq that Turkey will "clean up" a refugee camp which it says provides a safe haven for Kurdish militants, threatening to take its long military campaign deeper inside Iraqi territory.

Turkish forces have stepped up attacks on bases of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) inside northern Iraq over the last year, focusing their firepower and incursions mainly on a strip of territory up to 30 km (about 20 miles) inside Iraq.

But Erdogan said Makhmour, a camp 180 km south of the Turkish border which has hosted thousands of Turkish refugees for more than two decades, was an "incubator" for militants and must be tackled.

"If the United Nations does not clean it up, we will do it as a UN member," Erdogan said, adding that Ankara believed Makhmour posed as great a threat as the PKK's stronghold in the Qandil mountains further north.

"How long are we supposed to be patient about it?" he told Turkish state broadcaster TRT in an interview late on Tuesday.

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".