Syrian opposition forces captured a member of the terrorist group PKK with the assistance of Türkiye’s National Intelligence Organization (MIT), security sources said on Monday.
The woman, identified as Huda al-Tuma, was trying to infiltrate into Türkiye when she was captured by the military police of the Syrian National Army in Mabrouka, one of the towns in northeastern Syria where Türkiye conducted Operation Peace Spring in 2019, for the liberation of areas held by the terrorist group’s Syrian wing YPG.
Al-Tuma, codenamed "Cudi," was detained and taken to a military prison in the area. Security sources said al-Tuma joined the terrorist group in 2019 and underwent training in Syrian towns controlled by the YPG.
MIT has been quiet about its counterterrorism activities in the past but Türkiye’s top intelligence body is more open in publicizing its operations nowadays. This is largely due to the heightened success in the past two decades to find and eliminate terrorists, whether in Türkiye or abroad. Through the publicizing of operations, MIT also apparently hopes that the terrorist group would be daunted in its vicious campaign of violence for more than four decades that killed thousands.
Flanked by armed drones, MIT agents carried out 181 operations in 2023 and eliminated 201 terrorists. They also managed to destroy 45 energy facilities and parts of infrastructure the terrorist group built or operated, along with places used to store weapons and munitions by the PKK. Among the 38 terrorists eliminated by MIT were high-profile names.
The organization’s operations which eliminated terrorists who were behind attacks targeting Türkiye, as well as those who supplied weapons, recruits and cash to the terrorist group curbed PKK’s activities.
Precision operations are often carried out abroad, in Iraq’s north or Syria, two regions swarming with hideouts of the PKK. In Syria’s northeast, the PKK openly operates under the name of YPG, which claimed control of several towns under the guise of the fight against Daesh. Though it is recognized as a terrorist group elsewhere, the PKK also enjoys support from the United States in Syria thanks to this disguise.
Security sources say MIT is instrumental in contributing to Türkiye’s counterterrorism strategy focusing on "eliminating threats at its source," namely, beyond Türkiye’s borders. The PKK’s leaders are believed to be hiding in Iraq’s mountainous north and unconfirmed reports say some occasionally cross into Syria through porous parts of the border between the two Middle Eastern countries. Unlike in Iraq, the terrorist group is more "urbanized" in Syria where they even set up their own administrations under the name of SDF. MIT’s operations in Syria’s north destroyed critical facilities of the YPG, including an oil refinery where the group reaps the benefits of oil extracted in the region.