ISTANBUL (Dispatches) – The Turkish military says air strikes its forces have carried out killed 26 Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants in northern Iraq’s Qandil mountain region on June 12, the state-run news agency Anadolu reported.
The PKK, which has fought a decades-old insurgency against the state in southeastern Turkey, has bases in the Qandil region. President Tayyip Erdogan recently vowed to "drain the terror swamp” in Qandil.
"We’ve started anti-terror operations in Qandil and Sinjar. We’ve destroyed 14 important targets with our 20 aircraft. They [the warplanes] carried out airstrikes and returned; but it has not finished yet. It will continue,” Erdogan told local residents at a rally in the central Turkish town of Nigde.
He noted, "Our target is to drain the biggest swamp in Qandil region.”
PKK militants regularly clash with Turkish forces in the Kurdish-dominated southeast of Turkey attached to northern Iraq.
Turkey, along with the European Union and the United States, has declared the PKK a terrorist group and banned it. The militant group has been seeking an autonomous Kurdish region since 1984.
A shaky ceasefire between the PKK and the Turkish government collapsed in July 2015. Attacks on Turkish security forces have soared ever since.
Over the past few months, Turkish ground and air forces have been carrying out operations against PKK positions in the country as well as in northern Iraq and neighboring Syria.
More than 40,000 people have been killed during the three-decade conflict between Turkey and the autonomy-seeking militant group.
In a related development, Human Rights Watch says Turkey-backed militants in the Syrian town of Afrin have looted and destroyed civilian property after taking control of the Kurdish-dominated region in March.
"Those who made the decision to take over Afrin also took on the responsibility of ensuring that both the residents of Afrin, and people there who have been displaced elsewhere have basic shelter in a way that doesn’t infringe on either of those groups’ rights,” HRW’s acting emergencies director Priyanka Motaparthy said in a report.
"So far it seems that they are failing to do the right thing by either group,” she added.
The report is based on interviews and eyewitness accounts of people who have been displaced from Afrin. They accuse Turkey-backed forces of moving their fighters from other parts of Syria into vacated homes and of taking over business premises without paying compensation.
Roni Seydo left Afrin in March but was told by a friend that an armed group had taken over his house, painting the word "seized” on the outside wall. He said his neighbors were questioned about his family and its possible links with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).