The Interior Ministry announced Wednesday that two members of the terrorist group PKK were apprehended by gendarmerie troops in Istanbul. The suspects were plotting plans to carry out “a sensational attack” in Türkiye’s most populated city, the ministry said in a statement.
The suspects, identified as Fatima al-Musa, codenamed "Sterk Evindar," and Velat Jamo, were captured in the city’s Başakşehir district on the European side.
Security sources told Turkish media outlets that al-Musa joined the terrorist group in Syria’s Rajo, a town in the Afrin district which was once swarming with YPG terrorists, the Syrian wing of the PKK which carried out a bloody campaign against Türkiye since the 1980s.
She later traveled to Ain al-Arab, also known as Kobani, and Qamishli in the war-torn neighbor of Türkiye where she joined other terrorists in 2011. From there, she and 25 other terrorists sneaked into Northern Iraq where they underwent six months of “training” and were brought to Qandil, a stronghold of the terrorist group in Iraq.
She stayed there for the next five years, and further underwent training on explosives and terror attacks.
Al-Musa then infiltrated into Türkiye and hid in Şemdinli, a district of the southeastern province of Hakkari where the terrorist group staged attacks in the past. Increasing counterterrorism operations forced her to leave for Iraq again and in 2017, she returned to Syria. Security sources said she secretly traveled to Istanbul from Syria’s Afrin before her capture.
Velat Jamo was a so-called “regional commander” of the terrorist group between 2012 and 2013 in a part of Syria’s Afrin, according to the security forces.
On Tuesday, security forces “neutralized” a PKK terrorist in Nusaybin, a district of the southeastern province of Mardin. The term is used to describe terrorists captured alive or dead.
The Interior Ministry said that the terrorist opened fire on security forces raiding her residence, belonging to a former co-chair for Nusaybin of the Democratic Regions Party (DBP), a party affiliated with the PKK. Security forces found two pistols, silencers, two grenades and documents showing the terrorist’s affiliation with the terrorist group in a search.
The ministry said they also found notes about “reconnaissance work” the terrorist carried out about public buildings in Nusaybin for a potential attack.
Though it lost the ability to carry out sensational attacks because of large-scale counterterrorism operations, the terrorist group struck Istanbul last year. A terrorist placed a bomb on the city's busy Istiklal Street that killed six people on Nov. 13, 2022, and her accomplices were apprehended.
After the attack, Türkiye launched aerial operations against the terrorist group in Syria and Iraq. At the same time, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan implied that a ground operation to clear Syria’s north of terrorist groups threatening Türkiye was also on the table to remove Syria’s north of terrorist groups Türkiye.
The PKK/YPG terrorists responded to Turkish operations by firing rockets at civilians in a Turkish town on the border with Syria, killing two people, including a young boy and a teacher.
