Iraq’s former Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, now a veteran figure of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), said they approved Baghdad’s decision to shut down three political parties linked to the terrorist group PKK.
“It is the right thing to do and is wise,” Zebari said in a social media post on Tuesday. He said “front” parties of the PKK became a “cancerous tumor” for the region and the entirety of Iraq and a factor in “chaotic instability.”
Three political parties with ties to the PKK were dissolved by Iraqi authorities, local media reported on Tuesday.
The country’s Supreme Judicial Council approved a request by an electoral commission for the dissolution of the Yazidi Freedom and Democracy Party, The Democratic Struggle Front and the Tavgari Azadi Party, citing their links to the PKK. The council also ordered the confiscation of the parties’ assets, according to the media reports, though the verdict is subject to appeal.
Iraq stopped short of defining the PKK as a terrorist group, but last March, it banned the group from operating in the country after talks with Turkish officials and before a landmark visit by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to Baghdad. Last month, the government instructed all state institutions to refer to the PKK as a banned group in official correspondence.
The terrorist group has been responsible for the deaths of over 40,000 people, including women, children and infants since it launched a campaign of violence in Türkiye in the 1980s.
Since Turkish operations have driven its domestic presence to near extinction, the PKK has moved a large chunk of its operations to northern Iraq, including a stronghold in the Qandil Mountains, located roughly 40 kilometers (25 miles) southeast of the Turkish border in Irbil. It has a foothold in northern Iraq's semi-autonomous north controlled by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), where the central Iraqi government has little influence.
Türkiye's cross-border operations into northern Iraq have been a source of tension with its southeastern neighbor for years. Ankara has asked Iraq for more cooperation in combating the PKK. As a result, Baghdad labeled the group a banned organization and set up two military bases in the Zakho region in April.
Since the start of the year, Ankara has hinted at a final summer offensive against the PKK in both northern Iraq and Syria, where the PKK operates with its local offshoot, the YPG.
Defense Minister Yaşar Güler said that the ongoing Operation Claw-Lock, launched in April 2022, would be completed before the winter to sever the ties between Syria and Qandil.
Türkiye aims to wipe out the PKK from its borders and create a 30-40 kilometers deep security corridor along the Iraqi and Syrian borders.
Both the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) and the National Intelligence Organization (MIT) have since ramped up strikes on the “terror corridor” in the region, indicating a wider offensive may already be underway.
