A larger proportion of these clashes have taken place outside Turkey’s borders, with 77 percent of all engagements between Turkish forces and the PKK occurring in neighboring Iraq, the US-based Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) said Thursday.
In fact, just 23 percent of these engagements took place in Turkey, raising serious questions about Iraq’s professed sovereignty and the use of its territory by armed groups.
“Despite the pandemic, the Turkish military has intensified operations against the PKK in Turkey as well as Iraq,” said ACLED Research Analyst Adam Miller.
The PKK has fought a decades-long war with the Turkish state for greater cultural and political rights for Kurds in Turkey. Ankara considers the PKK a terrorist organization and routinely launches operations against its remote hideouts in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.
“On January 10, the Turkish military announced the beginning of a new operation against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party in the rural regions of Turkey near the border with Iraq – the first of several small operations against the PKK in 2020,” said Miller.
“Since the announcement, engagements between Turkish state forces and the PKK have increased, following a decline at the end of 2019,” he said.
“However, Turkey’s campaign against the PKK has not been limited to Turkish soil: the military has increasingly used air strikes against PKK forces in Iraq, where a majority of interactions between the PKK and the Turkish military have occurred,” he said.
“The renewed campaign against the PKK demonstrates the Turkish state’s desire to increase security in southeastern Turkey by pushing armed engagement towards Iraq,” Miller added.
Turkey’s burgeoning domestic drone program means it is relying less on ground incursions and the accompanied risk of military casualties and more on remote warfare.
“Air and drone strikes compose 76 percent of these interactions, demonstrating Turkey’s reliance on air power in its fight against the PKK,” Miller said.
Baghdad and Erbil have repeatedly objected to Turkish strikes inside their territory, which regularly harm civilians, kill livestock, and cause wildfires. They have also called on the PKK to stop using the Qandil Mountains and other remote border areas as hideouts.
Since it began almost four-decades ago, the conflict has claimed the lives of more than 40,000 people on all sides, including civilians, according to the International Crisis Group (ICG).
A ceasefire came into effect in 2013 during the short-lived peace process, which lasted until July 2015 when the talks collapsed.
Since then, 4,869 people have been killed, including 2,912 PKK fighters, 1,234 Turkish soldiers, 497 civilians, and 226 people of unknown affiliation, according to ICG figures, last updated May 7.
“Between April 6 and May 7, 2020, fatalities were concentrated in northern Iraq, while the Turkish military’s land operations targeting the PKK in Turkey’s south east continued,” ICG said earlier this month.
“A Turkish drone strike in northern Iraq on April 15 reportedly killed three civilians near the Makhmour camp, southwest of Erbil. Out of three Turkish security force fatalities in this period, two were caused by IED attacks,” it added.
The uptick in Turkey-PKK engagement comes despite the coronavirus pandemic. Turkey has the highest number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the entire region, dealing another body blow to its already weakened economy.
It also come despite appeals by the United National Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and other world leaders for all armed actors worldwide to suspend hostilities and focus instead on beating the common enemy of COVID-19.
“The fury of the virus illustrates the folly of war,” Guterres said in late March. “That is why today, I am calling for an immediate global ceasefire in all corners of the world. It is time to put armed conflict on lockdown and focus together on the true fight of our lives.”
Almost two months on, the UN Security Council has failed to reach agreement on a general and immediate cessation of hostilities or support a wider call for a humanitarian pause in all armed conflicts.
Civil society leaders have condemned the Security Council’s inability to show leadership and encourage peace talks – a failure which has resulted in the displacement of a further 661,000 people in 19 countries since March.
“While people are being displaced and killed, powerful members of the UN Security Council squabble like children in a sandbox,” Jan Egeland, Secretary-General of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), said in a statement Friday.
“Now is not the time for kindergarten politics,” he added.
