“Sgt. Zekeriya Zencirli, an infantry expert, was martyred on May 14 following an attack by terrorists,” read a statement from the Turkish Defense Ministry on Tuesday, without disclosing where he was killed.
Turkish media later reported that he was killed during a skirmish with the PKK in the far southeast of the country near the border with the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.
Pro-government Daily Sabah reported Tuesday that the soldier was killed in Hakkari’s Derecik district following an alleged infiltration attempt by the PKK into a Turkish military outpost.
A funeral was held on Tuesday for another Turkish soldier, Volkan Demirci, who was killed during clashes with the PKK on Monday, added the newspaper.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu “ensured” revenge in a tweet, saying that they will “surely make [the perpetrators] pay.”
Iraqi PM Adil Abdul-Mahdi is set to make his first official visit to Turkey on Wednesday. He will meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. During Abdul-Mahdi’s weekly press conference in Baghdad on Tuesday, he said he doesn’t want the PKK-Turkey fighting to continue to escalate on Iraqi soil.
The clashes in the border region have intensified recently, especially to the north.
To the west in neighboring Sirnak province, an improvised explosive device detonated in the Kurdish city of Silopi injuring three village guards during a shift change on Monday, according to state-owned Anadolu Agency (AA).
It blamed the PKK, who have been engaged in an off-and-on, sometimes armed struggle with the Turkish state for four decades with the aim of seeking greater Kurdish cultural, minority, and political rights in the country.
The village guards are local Kurds who are employed by the Turkish government to fight against the PKK.
In response, local Turkish security forces launched an operation against the perpetrators, AA added.
Turkish warplanes targeted PKK fighters at 6:30 p.m. in the Sidakan area in the north of Erbil province.
"Turkish [war] planes targeted a Toyota pickup vehicle belonging to the PKK, and killed two PKK guerillas," Sidakan Mayor Ihsan Chalabi told Rudaw. The clash left the villages of Kulit, Daraw, Berkma, and Zhilya in blackout.
The PKK claimed on Tuesday that they killed three Turkish soldiers on Monday in Sirnak, adding that “a great number of soldiers were also injured,” reported Roj News, media close to the group.
In a separate statement on Monday, the PKK claimed that they killed an “unknown” number of Turkish troops in Hakkari’s Cukurca, reported ANF, also media close to the PKK.
The Kurdish fighters announced Monday the death of two of their female guerillas who were killed on the Iraqi side of the border on May 5, without elaborating on their alleged casualties during clashes in the Turkish side of the border.
However, the Turkish defense ministry claimed on Tuesday that they killed four “terrorists” in eastern Tunceli (Dersim) province without providing the time of the incident.
The Daily Sabah reported on Monday that Turkish troops killed four PKK members in the same province, including Zilan Tek who is wanted by Ankara on a 600,000 Turkish lira ($99,730) bounty.
The interior ministry also announced on Monday the death of four PKK fighters in Hakkari province.
“In the framework of local security operations … on Dolamadi Hill in Yuksekova [a district in Hakkari], four terrorists were neutralized,” read a tweet from the interior ministry.
The Turkish security forces use the word “neutralized” to refer to those killed, wounded, or otherwise removed from the battlefield.
The PKK’s headquarters are in the mountains of Qandil near the Iraq-Iran-Turkey border. Its jailed leader, Abdulla Ocalan, was permitted his first prison visit by a lawyer in eight years on May 2.
PKK outlets and the Turkish media provide different figures when reporting casualties resulting from nearly daily clashes by the two sides. Peace talks between the PKK and the Turkish government made some progress in 2013.
The peace process, however, fell apart in July 2015 and the conflict “entered one of its deadliest chapters in nearly four decades,” according to the International Crisis Group (ICG), which is monitoring the conflict. The renewed conflict was brought into populated areas, devastating cities in Turkey’s Kurdish-populated southeast. Between July 20, 2015 and May 7, 2019 at least 4,356 people have been killed, according to ICG.
Reza Altun, a top PKK leadership member who serves as the party’s foreign relations liaison, appeared in an interview on pro-party media on Friday, dismissing claims that he had been killed or badly injured in airstrikes in Qandil on March 21.
