ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Decades-long conflict between Turkey and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has left 212 villages across Erbil province abandoned, an official told Rudaw on Thursday amid Ankara’s latest operation against the group in the Kurdistan Region.
Frequent Turkish operations in the Region seeking to rid its southern border of PKK fighters, allegedly using the area as a staging ground for attacks on Ankara's soil, have brought significant discomfort to villagers with many leaving their homes due to the conflict between the two.
"The villages have become the site of many conflicts, and the ongoing conflicts have caused a lot of problems for us as an administration," Halgurd Sheikh Najib, head of Soran independent administration, told Rudaw's Bakhtiyar Qadir.
Bradost, an area frequently bombed by Turkey, recorded the highest number of empty villages where 118 villages were abandoned in the past 30 years, Najib said.
Najib stressed that returning villagers cause his administration significant concern, saying that they "cannot ensure their safety" and "many unfortunate incidents have happened where they have fallen victim to Turkish bombardments and PKK landmines."
Apart from Turkey-PKK clashes, Iranian warplanes often target Bradost area. On Wednesday, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) targeted a mountainous area in Sidakan, inflicting no civilian or material damage.
Dozens of other villages have also been abandoned in Barzan, Choman, and Rawanduz.
Sixty five Barzan villages are uninhabited, 24 in Choman’s Balakayati area and five in Rawanduz, according to Najib.
Last month, Turkey announced a fresh phase in a series of anti-PKK operations, an armed group struggling for the increased rights of Kurds in Turkey. The operation, dubbed Claw-Lock, is an air and ground assault that heavily focuses on mountainous border areas where the PKK maintains a presence.
The recent incursion has been widely condemned by Iraqi officials, labeling it as a "hostile" and "provocative" violation of the country's sovereignty.
Turkey has come under criticism from Baghdad, Erbil, and the wider international community for violating Iraqi sovereignty, but Ankara continues to establish increasing numbers of bases and outposts in the mountains of Erbil and Duhok provinces. Turkey says that it is in the mountains of the Region to cut off the path of PKK militants and to prevent them from crossing into the Kurdish areas in the southeast of the country and attacking the security forces.
A parliamentary report published in 2020 said the conflict has left a staggering 504 villages empty across the Kurdistan Region.
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