The Turkish military has eliminated 23 more PKK terrorists in airstrikes in northern Iraq several days after a PKK attack in the capital, Ankara.
“We are determined to eliminate terrorism at its roots,” the Defense Ministry said in a statement on Monday.
On Wednesday, five people were killed in an attack on a defense company in Ankara. The PKK claimed responsibility for the attack. The Turkish authorities identified the attackers, a man and a woman, as PKK members.
Intensifying airstrikes destroyed hundreds of PKK/YPG targets in northern Iraq and Syria, as well as a "significant number” of terrorists since Wednesday’s attack.
Türkiye will not compromise on its multilateral and all-encompassing policy of eradicating terrorism at its source, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Friday on his way back from a BRICS summit in Russia.
The PKK, blacklisted as a terrorist organization in Türkiye, Europe and the United States, has been waging a bloody terror campaign against the Turkish state since the 1980s to achieve a so-called Kurdish self-rule in southeastern regions.
According to the International Crisis Group, the conflict has shifted from Türkiye to northern Iraq and northern Syria since 2019, after the Turkish military continued to push back PKK terrorists.
In northern Syria, Türkiye controls two large strips of territory along the border as a result of several military operations and cooperates with the Syrian opposition against the PKK and its U.S.-backed Syrian offshoot, the YPG.
Tens of thousands of people have already died in the conflict. A peace process failed in 2015. Speculation about a new process between the Turkish government and PKK emerged shortly before the attack in Ankara.
