A member of the PKK, who escaped from the terrorist organization with the help of his family and security forces, revealed the organizational structure of the PKK and its Syrian affiliate YPG in the Amanos Mountains in Turkey's border province of Hatay.
Stressing that he stayed for three years in the terrorist organization's camps in Syria, the 20-year-old former PKK member, whose initials are M.Ş.Ç., said he contacted his relatives living in southern Diyarbakır province to escape from the organization. With his family and security forces' help, M.Ş.Ç. fled from the PKK.
The former PKK member confessed under the effective remorse law, saying that the PKK's Amanos organization instructs members to target not only security forces but also tourism centers and industrial areas.
Stating that he was deployed in northwestern Syria's Afrin during the Turkish army's Operation Olive Branch in 2018 to liberate the area of PKK/YPG terrorists, M.Ş.Ç. said that the top YPG commander Mazloum Abdi – a senior terrorist sought by Turkey under the name Ferhat Abdi Şahin or his nickname "Şahin Cilo" – told them they would either attack Iran with support of the U.S. or a Turkish offensive in Afrin starts. "If Afrin Operation would not have launched, we would have attacked Iran," the confessor said.
M.Ş.Ç. added that troops loyal to the Bashar Assad regime distributed them "regime uniforms" after they retreated from Afrin.
The Turkish military entered Afrin town center and liberated it from terrorists on March 18, 2018, with the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) and Syrian National Army (SNA) taking a total of six town centers, 282 villages, 23 strategic hills, one dam and 50 other strategic points.
The former PKK member also revealed that they tried to spread propaganda regarding so-called attacks perpetrated by the Turkish army on civilian areas during Operation Peace Spring. "We attacked the Turkish army from district centers of Manbij, Tal Abyad, etc. to make them retaliate, so we could assert that the Turkish army hit civilian areas," M.Ş.Ç. said.
Turkey on Oct. 9 launched Operation Peace Spring to eliminate YPG terrorists from the area east of the Euphrates River in northern Syria in order to secure Turkey's borders, aid in the safe return of Syrian refugees and ensure Syria's territorial integrity.