Turkey has said its troops would enter northern Iraq to prevent an influx of refugees across its borders, but gave no date for an incursion the United States says it opposes.
Turkey's armed forces would also enter the Iraqi Kurdish enclave to prevent "terrorist activity", Foreign Minister Mr Abdullah Gul told reporters at a news conference.
"A vacuum was formed in northern Iraq and that vacuum became practically a camp for terrorist activity. This time we do not want such a vacuum," Mr Gul said.
"Turkey's relationship with northern Iraq is to hold migrant movements in their own country without allowing them into Turkey . . . Turkey has no designs on Iraqi soil," he added.
A United States official in Washington said the United States had not agreed to Turkey sending troops into northern Iraq.
Turkey's defence minister said earlier Turkey had opened its airspace to US military aircraft.
Turkey already stations several thousand soldiers a short distance inside northern Iraq, but Iraqi Kurds oppose their presence saying they threaten Iraq's territorial integrity.
Iraqi Kurds have vowed to fight Turkish troops if they come into their self-governing area, especially if they do so without US allies.
Kurds have ruled Iraq's three northernmost provinces since 1991, when US and British warplanes enforced a "no-fly" zone there to keep Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's forces away after he put down a Kurdish uprising at the end of the Gulf War.
Kurds have been generally positive towards the arrival of US forces, but they oppose any Turkish plan to send its own troops, saying Ankara is only interested in repressing Kurds.
Turkey has a large Kurdish minority living near its Iraqi border and fears for its own territorial integrity if a Kurdish homeland enters the agenda for a post-Saddam settlement in Iraq.
Turkey has frequently cited the need to protect Iraq's Turkoman minority, ethnically, linguistically and culturally close to Turks, as another reason for sending in troops.
But senior Iraqi Turkoman officials have dismissed the need for such a move.