 in northern Iraq and Syria, Agence France-Presse reported.){kind=link}
Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, on Saturday announced the imminent end of his government’s operations against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in northern Iraq and Syria, Agence France-Presse reported.
Turkey began its Operation Claw-Lock in April 2022, claiming it needed to secure its border with northern Iraq, from where it accused Kurdish separatists of launching attacks on Turkish territory.
“We will very soon complete the lockdown of the area of operation in northern Iraq,” Erdoğan said, adding that Kurdish forces were now “incapable of acting inside our borders.”
Erdoğan said the PKK had been “completely trapped” in both Iraq and Syria, telling young military academy graduates that Turkish forces were “all over them.”
“We will complete the missing points of the security corridor along our southern border with Syria.”
Erdoğan’s comments tally with those made earlier this week by Turkey’s defense minister, Yaşar Güler, who said his country was “determined” to clear the border area with Iraq and neighboring Syria of “terrorists.”
Decades-long struggle
Turkey has a long history of tensions with Kurdish separatists and has often launched operations in neighboring countries to fight militants it says are holed up there.
Within Turkey, the PKK has been involved in an on-off armed conflict since 1984.
Founded in 1978, the Marxist-inspired group is regarded as a terror organization by Turkey and most of its Western allies, including the United States and European Union.
It also has a presence in northern Iraq, as does Turkey, which has operated against the Kurdish group from several dozen military bases there.
Turkey’s incursions into Iraq have frequently strained bilateral ties and caused occasional frictions with its Western partners.
On Wednesday Iraq denounced fresh incursions by the Turkish army into its territory in the autonomous Kurdistan region, urging Ankara to resolve security issues diplomatically.
In recent weeks, Iraqi local media have reported an increase in Turkish strikes, sparking several fires in border areas. Some reports mentioned Turkish forces establishing new positions.
On Friday the Turkish defense ministry announced that one soldier had been killed and another wounded by an improvised explosive device in northern Iraq, blaming Kurdish militants.
Diplomatic overtures
That said, there have been signs of growing rapprochement in recent months.
In March, following a diplomatic visit, Baghdad quietly listed the PKK as a “banned organization” — although Ankara still demands that Iraq do more to fight against the militant group.
And in April, Erdoğan made his first visit to Iraq since 2011, where he called on Baghdad to rid itself of “all forms of terrorism.”
Since 2016, Ankara has likewise carried out successive ground operations to expel Kurdish forces from border areas of northern Syria, along with Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) fighters.
Pro-Turkish forces in Syria now control two vast strips of territory along the border.
After originally aiming to topple the government of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, Ankara has recently shifted focus to preventing what Erdoğan called a “terror corridor” opening up in northern Syria.
On July 7 the Turkish leader even suggested he might invite Assad to Turkey “at any moment,” offering an olive branch after the 2011 war severed ties between Ankara and Damascus.
But after Erdoğan’s intervention, Syrian diplomats made clear that any normalization of ties would depend on Ankara withdrawing troops from its territory.
Any bid to restore ties between Syria and Turkey “must be built on clear foundations that ensure the desired result,” the foreign ministry in Damascus said on Saturday.
“The foremost of which is the withdrawal of illegally present forces from Syrian territory.”