Turkey launched a large-scale ground operation targeting Kurdish insurgents in the north of Iraq on Thursday.
"Our goal is clear, our mission is obvious, and there will be no timeframe [for the pullout] until terrorist bases have been wiped out," Ahmet Davutoglu said in Baghdad.
He met with Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari to discuss ways of settling the crisis on the Turkish-Iraqi border.
Iraq has demanded an immediate end to the incursion, but U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he would tell Turkish leaders that the ongoing operation must not continue for more than two weeks.
"It's very important that the Turks make this operation as short as possible and then leave, and to be mindful of Iraqi sovereignty," he said. "I measure quick in terms of days, a week or two, something like that. Not months."
Turkey reportedly sent over 40 troop-carrying trucks towards the Iraqi border earlier on Wednesday.
The offensive against Kurdish fighters in northern Iraq has continued amid conflicting reports of rising casualties from both sides.
Ankara earlier said the operation is only aimed against the terrorist PKK group, not against "the territorial unity and stability of Iraq," stressing that Turkish army units, "will return to their permanent basing areas as soon as the set objectives have been attained."
The Turkish parliament gave the government a mandate last October to conduct cross-border operations in northern Iraq against PKK militants based there. Since mid-December, Turkey has carried out five air raids in the cross-border region, killing at least 175 separatists.
According to the Turkish General Staff data, there are some 3,500 insurgents in northern Iraq.
Ankara earlier warned about the possibility of moving into northern Iraq to conduct a military operation against PKK militants. Over 40,000 people have been killed in Turkey since 1984, when the PKK, which is listed as a terrorist organization by NATO, the U.S. and the EU, started its fight for an ethnic Kurdish state in the southeast of the country.
Since the 2003 U.S.-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein, Turkish separatist Kurds have received increasing, if unacknowledged, support from those living in the three neighboring provinces of oil-rich northern Iraq, whose population has sought autonomy from Baghdad and where local Peshmerga militia formally took over security functions from U.S. forces earlier this month.
Ethnic Kurds have also been actively driving for autonomy in eastern parts of Syria. The borders between the three countries are still unsecured.
Turkish authorities have consistently refused to enter into a dialogue with the separatists.
