Türkiye’s National Intelligence Organization (MIT) caught Ramazan Güneş, a PKK member who was behind 12 acts of terrorism that killed 60 Turkish security personnel in the past, in Iraq’s Sulaymaniyah, media outlets reported Tuesday.
The Turkish intelligence agency has stepped up its operations abroad in recent years to stamp out terrorist activities in Iraq and Syria, Türkiye’s two neighbors. In 2022 alone, 23 senior figures of the terrorist group were eliminated in MIT’s operations in the two countries, while a large number of PKK members were transported to Türkiye. Since 2018, more than 100 terrorists have been eliminated by Turkish intelligence. Last week, a PKK member behind a terrorist attack on Istanbul’s Istiklal Street last year was killed in a MİT operation in Syria.
Güneş joined the terrorist group in 2008 and was among terrorists hiding in rural areas of the southeastern Turkish province of Hakkari before he traveled to Syria and Iraq. Since 2009, he has served in PKK’s "special forces" wing, which carried out attacks targeting Turkish security forces. Between 2011 and 2017, he played an active role in attacks that killed 60 Turkish security personnel in 12 terror attacks in Hakkari's Çukurca district. He was detected in an area of Sulaymaniyah, which is viewed as a hideout place by PKK. The MIT had been running a surveillance operation on Güneş for about one year before dispatching a group of field agents to capture him "when circumstances became suitable," media outlets reported.
Security sources said Güneş joined fellow terrorists in several attacks, including simultaneous raids targeting gendarmerie troops and lodgings for police officers in 2011 that killed 26 soldiers, as well as an attack in 2011 on soldiers on a road between Çukurca and Hakkari that killed nine soldiers. In August 2012, Güneş was involved in an attack targeting a gendarmerie outpost that killed six soldiers and two village guards who assist security personnel in counterterrorism efforts in southeastern and eastern Türkiye. In his last known attack, Güneş was responsible for the killing of a soldier in a military outpost in a mountainous area of Çukurca on July 5, 2017.
Türkiye has long been stressing that it will not tolerate terrorist threats against national security. It has called on Iraqi officials to take the necessary steps to eliminate the terrorist group. Ankara previously noted that it would not avoid targeting terrorist threats if the expected steps were not taken. In the last two years, the operations intensifying in northern Iraq have demolished terrorist lairs in Metina, Avashin-Basyan, Zap and Gara. After eradicating the group’s influence in these regions, Türkiye also aims to clear Qandil, Sinjar and Makhmour. The Qandil Mountains in northern Iraq are the PKK’s stronghold, and the group is active in many nearby cities and towns. In addition, it occupies many villages in the region from where it launches attacks on Türkiye.
Last April, Türkiye launched Operation Claw-Lock to target PKK hideouts in Iraq’s northern Metina, Zap and Avashin-Basyan regions near the Turkish border. It was preceded by Operations Claw-Tiger and Claw-Eagle, launched in 2020 to eliminate terrorists hiding in northern Iraq and plotting cross-border attacks in Türkiye.