The Interior Ministry announced on Monday that two terrorists from the PKK were “neutralized” in Erzincan, an eastern Turkish province. “Neutralized” is a term used by Turkish authorities to describe terrorists captured dead or alive.
The terrorists are identified as Y. B. and H. G. and were in the “green” and “gray” categories of the ministry’s most wanted terrorist list, which offers monetary rewards for tipoffs leading to their capture.
Minister Ali Yerlikaya said in a social media post that gendarmerie forces in Erzincan carried out the operation to eliminate terrorists. The operation was dubbed “Heroes-28” after a series of operations launched following PKK’s Oct. 1 attack targeting the police headquarters in the capital Ankara.
Yerlikaya said security forces discovered terrorists in a rural area of Erzincan’s Kemah district and shared a video showing details of the operation, including troops entering what appears to be a cave – the hideout of the terrorists. The minister stated that the two terrorists were responsible for several killings, including the 2021 murder of Specialist Sgt. Burak Tortumlu and the 2016 killings of Specialist Sgts. Mesut Ardıç and Ismail Yüksel. Yerlikaya said the troops took revenge for the martyrs. He said Y. B. was also the perpetrator of six terror attacks and perpetrator of an attack that injured five security officers. H.G. was involved in the killing of a civilian in a terror attack.
In a separate statement, the Erzincan governorate said they recovered two rifles and survival kits from the terrorists. The governorate said the operation ended the existence of the so-called “Munzur field unit” of the terrorist group that has been active in an area between Erzincan and the Tunceli province. The terrorist group, which launched its first attacks in eastern Türkiye in the 1980s, has been more active in the southeast provinces, from Diyarbakır to Şırnak, but expanded its attacks to further north where Erzincan is located and even infiltrated into the Black Sea region. Incessant counterterrorism operations in recent years, however, significantly reduced the PKK’s presence in all regions from the north to the east. Authorities say only dozens of terrorists are now in hiding in Türkiye. The PKK, however, retains hideouts and an unknown number of recruits in the northern regions of Iraq and Syria, both in the immediate vicinity of Turkish borders.
