As a community with close ties with Türkiye, Turkmens in northern Iraq feel the heat from the PKK terrorist group.
Hasan Turan, the president of the Iraqi Turkmen Front, said Saturday that it received a warning from an Iraqi intelligence unit that the terrorist group could launch attacks on Turkmen officials and Iraqi Turkmen Front buildings.
Turan told Anadolu Agency (AA) that similar warnings had been issued before, noting the assassination of the former head of the Security Department of the Iraqi Turkmen Front, Ahmet Tahir, about a year ago and the killing of Turkmen tribal leader Huseyin Allus on March 31 in a terrorist attack.
He said the PKK is a banned organization in Iraq and the government should not tolerate it. He urged Baghdad to declare the PKK a terrorist group.
Turan stressed the presence of Iraqi Turkmen Front offices and organizations in areas where PKK operates, such as Sulaymaniyah, Kirku and Kifri, pointing out the worrisome nature of the PKK's operations under the guise of civil society organizations. Turan demanded the government put an end to the existence, offices and activities of the terror organization in those areas, stating that the PKK recruits and deceives young people in areas where it operates, posing a threat to Iraqi youth.
Collaboration between the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the PKK in semi-autonomous northern Iraq risks spillover of the terrorist group's violent campaigns to the wider region. The PUK, based in northern Iraq's Sulaymaniyah, stands accused of giving more freedom of movement both in the city and rural parts of Sulaymaniyah to the PKK.
The PKK seeks to legitimize its presence through political parties and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). In rural Sulaymaniyah, it intimidates the local population by setting up "checkpoints" and through extortions and kidnappings. The terrorist group's activities hindered efforts for infrastructure improvements in some 800 villages in northern Iraq and disrupted local farmers' access to their lands, according to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). Further east of Sulaymaniyah, the PKK is also involved in drug smuggling and smuggling of goods on the Iran-Iraq border. In central Sulaymaniyah, the terrorist group is affiliated with several organizations, from Tevgera Azadi, a political association, to the Kurdish Women's Research Library and Academy. The PUK issues IDs exclusive to its counterterrorism units to PKK members, helping them to move easily around the city and beyond. The PUK's assistance to the PKK also helps the latter to build a strategic "bridge" with the YPG, the terrorist group's Syria wing. The PUK is also behind military training for YPG members who cross into Iraq from northern Syria. The scope of the PUK and PKK cooperation further became evident with a 2023 helicopter crash. Nine people killed in the collision in Iraq's Duhok were found to be PKK members.
Moreover, PUK leader Bafel Talabani sent his counterterrorism chief to the funerals of terrorists in Syria's north a week after the crash. Ferhat Abdi Şahin, code-named "Mazloum Kobani," leader of the PKK's YPG wing, is also a frequent visitor to Sulaymaniyah, just as Talabani himself occasionally travels to PKK strongholds in Syria. Cemil Bayık, one of the leaders of the PKK, and Şahin, were invited to a convention of Kurdish political parties in Sulaymaniyah in November 2022.
In PUK-governed Sulaymaniyah, the PKK ran wild with its campaign of terrorism that involved the arson of offices of political parties opposing its ideology, as well as the arson of public buildings, from libraries and banks to town halls. A "youth wing" of the PKK was also behind the burning of fields in Sulaymaniyah's rural district of Ranya in August 2023. A representative of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), a rival of the PUK, has called for the "prevention" of activities of the PKK following the attack, citing that PKK's youth wing sought to bring chaos and war to the region. Dilshad Reshid Mella, a senior member of the Gorran Movement, claimed that the PKK established a new unit in August 2023, and the group was also behind the assassination of a Peshmerga commander, as well as the killing of a Turkish diplomat stationed at Türkiye's consulate in Irbil in northern Iraq.
The PKK, which launched a campaign of terrorism in Türkiye in the 1980s, is designated a terrorist organization by Ankara and its Western allies.
Since Turkish operations have driven its domestic presence to near extinction, the PKK has moved a large chunk of its operations to northern Iraq, including a stronghold in the Qandil Mountains, located roughly 40 kilometers (25 miles) southeast of the Turkish border in Irbil.
Türkiye has, over the past 25 years, operated several dozen military bases in northern Iraq in its war against the PKK, as well as the war against Daesh, which controlled much of the area, in 2014 and 2015, when Ankara was an ally in the U.S.-led anti-Daesh campaign.
Ankara launched Operation Claw-Lock in April 2022, the latest in the string of cross-border "Claw" offensives kicked off in 2019, to demolish terrorist lairs across Metina, Avashin-Basyan, Zap and Gara districts and prevent the formation of a terror corridor along Turkish borders. The PKK carried out attacks, killing more than a dozen Turkish soldiers in the past two months in Metina. The high toll led to an increase in Turkish operations, which sometimes take place deep into Iraqi territory.
