Senior PKK leader threatens to bring terror to cities

Cemil Bayık, a senior leader of the Kurdish Communities' Union (KCK), an umbrella organization that includes the PKK, threatened to spread violence across cities. Speaking to the PKK-affiliated Fırat News Agency (ANF) on Monday, Bayık said that war will be waged everywhere, including in the mountains, across plains and in the cities, explaining that "the war is not limited to the mountains anymore."

Defining it as "a new stage," Bayık said: "The [Turkish] state and city police will not be the dominant power anymore. … The war is carrying on in the metropolis and it will be conducted. … Killing police officers and the armed conflict in the cities will reveal the truth. The police will no longer live as comfortably as they used to in the cities."

Bayık previously said that the main aim of the terrorist organization was to topple President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the Justice and Development Party (AK Party). Speaking to the British daily The Times in March, four days before a car bombing killed 35 civilians in Ankara, Bayık said that the PKK is the main obstacle to Erdoğan's dreams coming true; even though Turkey's functioning democratic regime n a region rout with turmoil and an electoral process which has repeatedly been confirmed as free and fair by international monitors.

The intense anti-PKK operations have forced it to alter its strategy, with it moving from from city to rural areas. Underlining that the PKK used to launch armed raids on security forces outposts in groups of 40 to 50, military sources said that PKK attacks on military outposts in rural areas has reduced to groups of five to 10. The sources further surmised that the PKK's change in strategy has three aims, with causing damage to the security forces in one way or another at the forefront. The second aim is to intensify harassment of security forces in rural areas and try to re-focus on urban attacks by distracting security forces. The third aim is to give a message to locals that the group is still around even though it has been driven from urban areas

The PKK, listed as a terrorist organization by the U.S. and the EU, resumed its nearly 40-year armed campaign against the Turkish state in July 2015. Since then, over 600 security personnel, including troops, police officers and village guards have been killed along with more than 7,000 PKK terrorists in operations across Turkey and Northern Iraq.