Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan warned Jalal Talabani's son, Bafal Talabani's Suleymaniyah-based PUK in northwestern Iraq to distance itself from the PKK terrorists.
"Our hope is for our friends in Suleymaniyah to correct their mistake," Fidan told a live broadcast on Monday, adding that Ankara expects them to revive their friendship and take a common stance for the future.
“We do not want to become enemies with our allies as we eliminate the PKK,” he said, adding that Ankara expects them to not support the terrorist group. He referred to the local administration in Suleymaniyah, which he said does not only support the PKK terrorists but also lets the YPG terrorists use the region to provide logistical support to the terrorists.
“We will continue to put pressure on them,” Fidan said, adding that officials in Suleymaniyah need to immediately correct their mistake.
Turkish officials have voiced criticism of the PUK for allowing Suleymaniyah, its administrative capital, to be a refuge for PKK terrorists.
Highlighting the enduring friendship between Türkiye and the people of the Iraqi city of Sulaymaniyah, Fidan said the leadership of northern Iraq's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) party in Sulaymaniyah "poses a national security threat to Türkiye due to its cooperation with the terror group PKK."
Stressing collaborative efforts to shape the future in the Iraqi cities of Irbil, Sulaymaniyah, Baghdad, Kirkuk, and Mosul, he said there is no place for terrorist groups in these areas.
"We must now remove them from our system. These are organizations whose lifespan has expired. The cities and cultures I mentioned are ancient, and they have overcome such threats before, and hopefully, they will continue to do so in the future," he said.
Such groups must be excluded from the system as they have reached their expiration date, he said.
Fidan last week, along with Turkish intelligence chief Ibrahim Kalın and Deputy Interior Minister Münir Karaloğlu, visited Iraq, as news came that Iraq's National Security Council had officially designated the terrorist PKK group an outlawed group.
In its more than 40-year terror campaign against Türkiye, the PKK - listed as a terrorist organization by Türkiye, the U.S., and EU - has been responsible for the deaths of more than 40,000 people, including women, children, and infants.
