A pro-PKK journalist was killed on Friday while he was clashing with Turkish police in the ranks of the terror group in the southeastern Mardin province.

Dicle News Agency journalist İlyas Türkan was killed in Mardin's Nusaybin neighborhood as he was fighting against the police during anti-terror operations.

Türkan was also Batman distributor of the Özgür Gündem daily, a newspaper strongly linked with the PKK.

The PKK-also seen as a terrorist organization by the U.S. and the EU-resumed its 30-year armed campaign against the Turkish state in July 2015.

Since then, over 400 security personnel, including troops, police officers and village guards have been martyred and more than 3,700 PKK terrorists killed in operations across Turkey and northern Iraq.