Security sources announced on Tuesday that a "high-ranking" member of the PKK/YPG in Syria was "neutralized" in Syria by the Turkish National Intelligence Organization (MIT). The term is used to describe killing or capture of terrorists.
The target was named as Mehmet Sarı codenamed "Baran Kurtay," who was responsible for a PKK cell active in Raqqa. MIT carried out the operation in Syria’s Qamishli against Sarı.
Sarı was involved in acts of terrorism in Türkiye before traveling to Syria in 2014 and was in close contact with the PKK leadership, security sources said.
The Turkish intelligence agency has stepped up its operations abroad in recent years to stamp out terrorist activities in Iraq and Syria, Türkiye’s two southeastern neighbors. In 2022 alone, 23 senior figures of the terrorist group backed by the United States in Syria were eliminated in MIT’s operations in the two countries, while a large number of PKK members were transported to Türkiye. Since 2018, more than 100 terrorists have been eliminated by Turkish intelligence forces. In February, a PKK member behind a terrorist attack on Istanbul’s Istiklal Street last year was killed in a MIT operation in Syria.
For more than 40 years, the PKK – listed as a terrorist organization by Türkiye, the U.S., the United Kingdom and the European Union – has been responsible for the deaths of more than 40,000 people, including women, children and infants.
Since 2016, Ankara has launched a trio of successful counterterrorism operations – Euphrates Shield (2016), Olive Branch (2018) and Peace Spring (2019) – across its border in northern Syria and northern Iraq to prevent the formation of a terror corridor and enable the peaceful settlement of residents.
