Türkiye’s security forces have eliminated a total of 27 PKK/YPG terrorists in northern Iraq in the past four days and another eight in northern Syria, the Defense Ministry said on Friday.
Turkish airstrikes targeted northern Iraq’s Matina, Zap, Gara, Hakurk, Qandil and Asos regions since Monday and eliminated some 20 PKK terrorists on Sept. 2 and another seven in the Hakurk region in the following days, the ministry said on X.
“Turkish jets continue assessing the region,” it assured.
Separately, it said the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) eliminated eight PKK/YPG terrorists in northern Syria.
The PKK has been responsible for the deaths of more than 40,000 people, including women, children, infants and the elderly, in its 40-year-long terror campaign against the Turkish state. The YPG is its Syrian offshoot that exploited the power vacuum during the Syrian civil war to occupy swathes of oil and gas-rich land and create a self-styled entity in northeastern Syria.
Both the TSK and Turkish intelligence regularly carry out strikes in PKK/YPG-held areas.
Türkiye controls two large strips of territory along the border after expelling PKK/YPG forces in successive campaigns. Ankara says it aims to create a security strip along its Syrian and Iraqi borders and sever the ties between the YPG and PKK strongholds in northern Iraq’s Qandil region.
Defense Minister Yaşar Güler has said an ongoing operation launched in northern Iraq in April 2022 would be finalized before the winter. Turkish airstrikes have ramped up in the region since.
PKK is not recognized as a terrorist group in Iraq but is banned from launching attacks on Türkiye from Iraqi soil.
Baghdad in March outlawed the PKK and agreed in August to a military cooperation that will see joint training and command centers against the terrorists but Ankara wants Iraq to fully recognize it as a terrorist organization.
