A member of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) carries an automatic rifle on a road in the Qandil Mountains, the PKK headquarters in Iraqi Kurdistan region, June 22, 2018. Photo: AFP
ANKARA,— Turkey and Iran on Monday started a joint military operation against Kurdish rebels on Turkey’s eastern border, state-run Anadolu news agency quoted the interior minister as saying.
Turkey has recently talked about a possible joint operation with neighbour Iran to counter Kurdish militants from the the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), but this is the first time Turkish authorities have confirmed a raid.
“We started staging a joint operation with Iran against the PKK on our eastern border as of 0800 (0500 GMT) this morning,” Suleyman Soylu said of the operation against the PKK.
“We will announce the result later,” he said.
Soylu did not specify precisely which PKK bases the planned operation targeted but President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has in the past said it would be against militant hideouts in Iraqi Kurdistan.
The Turkish military has often bombed PKK bases in Iraqi Kurdistan’s mountainous regions as part of its decades-long operations against the group.
Iranian security forces have also fought the PKK affiliate, the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK). Both groups have rear bases in neighbouring Iraq.
PJAK, is a militant Kurdish nationalist group based on the border areas between Iraq’s Kurdistan region and Iranian Kurdistan region, that has been carrying out attacks Iranian forces in the Kurdistan Province of Iran (Eastern Kurdistan) and other Kurdish-inhabited areas.
Since 2004 the PJAK (Partiya Jiyana Azad a Kurdistane) took up arms to establish a semi-autonomous Kurdish regional entities or Kurdish federal states in Iran, similar to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq. The PJAK has more than 3,000 armed militiamen, half the members of PJAK are women.
The PKK has waged a three-and-a-half decade insurgency against the Turkish state, initially seeking independence and more recently autonomy for Turkey’s Kurdish minority. Fighting has left tens of thousands dead.
The PKK took up arms in 1984 against the Turkish state, which still denies the constitutional existence of Kurds, to push for greater autonomy in Turkish Kurdistan for the Kurdish minority who make up around 22.5 million of the country’s 79-million population. More than 40,000 Turkish soldiers and Kurdish rebels, have been killed in the conflict.
A large Kurdish community in Turkey and worldwide openly sympathise with PKK rebels and Abdullah Ocalan, who founded the PKK group in 1974 and currently serving a life sentence in Turkey, has a high symbolic value for most Kurds in Turkey and worldwide according to observers.
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