Türkiye’s National Intelligence Organization (MIT) has eliminated a so-called senior PKK member in northern Iraq, security sources said Thursday.
Serkan Nazlıer, code-named “Sefkan Amed,” was sought under Türkiye’s most-wanted red category, sources said.
He organized PKK attacks carried out in Türkiye’s metropolitans, including assigning and directing the attacks’ perpetrators.
Nazlıer was under priority surveillance after MIT discovered the terrorist group was appointing senior members as heads of so-called states in northern Iraqi regions.
His location was discovered after long-term field surveillance in the rural Khakurk region of Iraq.
The operation also follows intensified strikes in northern Iraq and Syria in response to a PKK attack in the Turkish capital, Ankara, that killed five people and injured 22 others on Wednesday.
The PKK, which has massacred over 40,000 people in Türkiye in a four-decadelong terror campaign, is not designated a terrorist organization in Iraq but is banned from launching operations against Türkiye from Iraqi territory.
Since Turkish operations have driven its domestic presence to near extinction, the PKK has moved a large chunk of its operations to northern Iraq.
Ankara maintains dozens of military bases there, and it regularly launches operations against the PKK, which uses a stronghold in the Qandil Mountains, located roughly 40 kilometers (25 miles) southeast of the Turkish border in Irbil.
The PKK also occupies Sinjar, Makhmour and has a foothold in Sulaymaniyah, which sits in northern Iraq’s semiautonomous north controlled by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), where the central Iraqi government has little influence.
