Türkiye’s counterterrorism struggles to hit the PKK continue ceaselessly as the terrorist group confronts a crackdown both within the country and in Iraq and Syria where it has defences.
The Countr’s Ministry of National Defense reported airstrikes carried out by the army eliminated nine terrorists in Gara and five others in the Hakurk parts of northern Iraq.
“We are determined to drain the terrorism at its source,”
the ministry stated.
In its 40-year terror movement against Türkiye, the PKK has been accountable for the deaths of more than 40,000 people, including ladies, children, newborns and the elderly. Since Turkish procedures have driven its domestic sight to near extinction, the PKK has carried a large chunk of its operations to a defence in the Qandil Mountains, located approximately 40 kilometres (25 miles) southeast of the Turkish border in Irbil, northern Iraq.
Security sources expressed two key operatives of the terrorist group were destroyed in Syria by the National Intelligence Organization (MIT). The targets were recognised as Hüseyin Öztürk and Vidan Fate, also known by their aliases “Mazlum” and “Zelal Afrin,” respectively. The operation was undertaken in Syria’s Tal Rifaat where the two terrorists were in charge of the PKK’s crews in the region.
The two PKK members were behind terrorist raids targeting Turkish security forces stationed at an area in Syria where the army executed the cross-border Operation Olive Branch in 2018, sources stated. Öztürk, who joined the terrorist party in 1994, was on the target checklist of MIT for his function in orchestrating aggression on Turkish security forces in Türkiye, Iraq and Syria in the past.
In the meantime, local authorities reported that a PKK member behind 20 terror raids was caught alive by gendarmerie forces in the eastern province of Tunceli, a former hotbed of PKK movements. The suspect, recognised as M.A. and also known under the alias “Ahmet Kalker,” was concerned in attacks that killed 27 members of security forces and wounded 35 others as well as two civilians between 1995 and 2000. Tunceli Governor Bülent Tekbıyıkoğlu expressed security forces also persuaded C.A., a PKK member abroad, to return to Türkiye and surrender on Oct. 8.
