Serhat Bal, one of the ringleaders of the terrorist group PKK was captured in an unspecified "Middle Eastern country" by the National Intelligence Organization (MIT), sources said on Friday. Bal was trying to flee into Europe when captured by the intelligence agency.

MIT was running a surveillance operation on Bal and located his last whereabouts recently. Bal joined the PKK in 2012 and was a senior terrorist operating in Syria and Iraq. He already had an arrest warrant by Turkish authorities for membership in a terrorist group.

Both MIT and the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) regularly conduct cross-border operations in Iraq and Syria. PKK’s leadership hides out in Iraq’s mountainous north while the group enjoys U.S. support in northeastern Syria where it claims to fight against Daesh.

MIT has been quiet about its counterterrorism activities in the past but Türkiye’s top intelligence body is more open in publicizing its operations nowadays. This is largely due to the heightened success in the past two decades to find and eliminate terrorists, whether in Türkiye or abroad. Through publicizing, MIT also apparently hopes that the terrorist group would be daunted in its vicious campaign of violence for more than four decades that killed thousands.

Flanked by armed drones, MIT agents carried out 181 operations in 2022 and eliminated 201 terrorists. They also managed to destroy 45 energy facilities and parts of infrastructure the terrorist group built or operated, along with locations used to store weapons and munitions by the PKK. Among the 38 terrorists eliminated by MIT were high-profile names.

The organization’s operations, which eliminated terrorists who were behind attacks targeting Türkiye, as well as those who supplied weapons, recruits and cash to the terrorist group, curbed the PKK’s activities.