ANKARA — One Turkish soldier was killed in northern Iraq on Wednesday in an attack by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants, Turkey’s Defense Ministry said.
The ministry said the soldier was killed by “harassment fire” by the militants in a region where Turkey has engaged in Operation Claw-Lock against the PKK since 2019.
Headquartered in northern Iraq, the PKK has been waging an armed campaign against Turkey for Kurdish self-rule inside Turkey since 1984 and is considered a terrorist organization by Ankara, Washington and a majority of European capitals.
The attack comes at a time when Turkey has intensified its offensive against the militant group in an effort to clear it from the Iraq-Turkey border areas and establish at least a 40-kilometer-deep (24 miles) security zone in northern Iraq.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in July that his country “will very soon complete the lockdown of the area of operation in northern Iraq.”
Turkish troops last month penetrated 15 kilometers (about nine miles) into Iraqi territory, in a bid to encircle PKK fighters positioned in the Metina and Gara mountainous region lying south of the Turkish border, according to Iraqi media reports.
Echoing claims that the fresh Turkish offensive displaced hundreds of people and destroyed thousands of acres of agricultural land in northern Iraq, Iraqi first lady Shanaz Ibrahim Ahmed on July 18 blasted Ankara as well as Baghdad and Erbil for the Turkish assault. The Turkish Defense Ministry denied the claims.
Baghdad banned the PKK as a political organization in March and, since then, has been stepping up measures against the armed group, according to Turkish government officials.
Earlier this week, Iraqi authorities disbanded three political parties over their ties to the PKK.
Separately, the Turkish defense ministry said earlier Wednesday that four Kurdish militants with the PKK’s Syrian offshoot, the Kurdish People’s Defense Units (YPG), were killed in northern Syria after they opened “harassment fire” in the Turkish-controlled regions of the country. Turkey, which launched four ground incursions against the YPG in Syria’s north from 2016 to 2020, controls large chunks of territories in northern Syria as well as armed Syrian opposition groups fighting against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
The YPG is the backbone of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which has been the main ally of the US-led international coalition against the Islamic State. Turkey equates the SDF with the PKK and has been pushing its NATO allies to cut off their cooperation with the armed group.
More recently, Turkey intensified outreach to resume a high-level dialogue between Ankara and Damascus, as it seeks the Assad government’s cooperation against the SDF. Damascus, which, in turn, has been pressing for the Turkish military’s withdrawal from the country, remain skeptical of resuming the dialogue — which stalled last year — before a commitment from Ankara over the Turkish military presence in Syria.
Erdogan in July also vowed that Turkey would “complete the missing points of the security corridor” along the country’s southern border with Syria.
