The Interior Ministry announced on Tuesday two members of the PKK terrorist group were eliminated in an operation in a rural part of Lice, a town in southeastern Diyarbakır province.
Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya shared aerial footage of Operation Mace-14, the latest in a string of counterterrorism operations, on his social media account. The footage shows a combined force of gendarmerie troops and local village guards, flanked by ATAK helicopters moving toward a hideout of terrorists and several explosions. Yerlikaya said two village guards were injured in a shootout with terrorists.
The terrorists were identified as Zırav Taş, code-named "Hebun Piro Amed" and Fehmi Başkurt, code-named "Botan." Taş was in the red category of the ministry’s most wanted list, while Başkurt was in the gray category of the same list. Taş was the so-called “Amed state chair” of the terrorist group, a name used by the PKK to refer to a region including Diyarbakır. The province has been among the recruiting grounds of the terrorist group and also hosts a yearslong sit-in strike by families of children brainwashed to join the group. As for Lice, the town has been the scene of multiple operations in recent years against the PKK’s drug smuggling and cannabis cultivation.
Taş and Başkurt were involved in six known terrorist attacks, according to the ministry. They were wanted for the killing of five civilians and three security officers in those attacks. Among the attacks they were involved in was an explosion of a roadside bomb planted by the PKK in Diyarbakır’s Kulp district on April 8, 2020, which led to the deaths of five workers traveling in the same vehicle and the killing of a security officer in a shootout in rural Lice on Jan. 9, 2021. They were also involved in other PKK roadside bomb attacks and the kidnapping of an informant collaborating with authorities to indict them.
PKK terrorists often hide in northern Iraq to plot cross-border attacks in Türkiye. It also has a Syrian branch, known as the YPG. Türkiye launched Operation Claw-Lock in April 2022 to target the PKK terrorist group's hideouts in the Metina, Zap and Avasin-Basyan regions of northern Iraq, located near the Turkish border. The terrorist group's presence in mountainous areas in eastern and southeastern Türkiye was minimized thanks to persistent counterterrorism operations, and authorities say the group's members still hiding in Turkish territories are only around a few dozens.
