ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Turkey claims to have “neutralized” dozens of Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) guerrillas since clashes escalated this week on Mount Khakurk, Kurdistan Region. The PKK says it has killed at least a dozen Turkish soldiers in the last four days. Turkey launched Operation Claw on May 27, targeting PKK positions inside the Kurdistan Region, close to its border with Turkey and Iran. Hukusi Akar, Turkey’s defense minister, visited Turkish troops in the border city of Yuksekova, Hakkari province late Monday. There, he said Turkish soldiers are conducting “a great fight in rugged terrain” and have “neutralized” 28 PKK fighters since the offensive began, according to a ministry statement. The Turkish army regularly uses the term neutralized to refer to those killed, wounded, or otherwise removed from the battlefield. A further 25 PKK fighters have been neutralized in separate Turkish military operations in the Kurdistan Region and 11 others inside Turkey, the defense minister said, bringing the total to 64 since May 27. The operation has utilized fixed wing aircraft, helicopters, artillery, and ground forces. It centers on Mount Khakurk in the northern part of Erbil province. Recent footage captured by locals showed great plumes of smoke rising from the mountainside. Ankara is widely reported to have targeted PKK positions with a domestically-build ballistic missile. In a statement published Monday, the Peoples’ Defence Forces (HPG), the armed wing of the PKK, said its fighters had killed 12 Turkish soldiers on Mount Khakurk between May 30 and June 1. A “considerable number” of Turkish troops have been injured, it said, while confirming two of its fighters had been killed. One Turkish soldier and an unspecified number of “high-ranking soldiers” have been killed on the Turkish side of the border in the most recent PKK attacks, the HPG said. The PKK, an armed group fighting for greater political and cultural rights for Kurds in Turkey, has fought a decades-long war with the Turkish state. The group uses the Kurdistan Region of Iraq as a safe haven. It is currently headquartered in the Qandil Mountains. Turkey has repeatedly launched cross-border incursions and bombing raids targeting the group in violation of Iraq’s sovereignty. Civilians are routinely caught in the crossfire. Villagers in Duhok stormed a Turkish air force outpost in January after airstrikes killed six civilians. Both Erbil and Baghdad have called on Ankara to halt its attacks and demanded the PKK withdraw from their territory. Iraqi President Barham Salih “stressed the need to safeguard Iraqi sovereignty and rejected any unilateral military action beyond Iraq’s borders,” when he met with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Istanbul last week. Up to 40,000 people have died in the conflict since 1984. At least 4,397 people have been killed since the short-lived peace process collapsed in 2015, according to the International Crisis Group.
