Security operations ramped up across Türkiye in the wake of a deadly terror attack in Ankara have netted hundreds of PKK suspects and eliminated a wanted terrorist.

Ramazan Aktaş, wanted in the red category, was eliminated in a shootout that broke out during a raid in eastern Mardin province, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya announced Friday.

The terrorist, active in the PKK’s rural ranks, was preparing for an attack, Yerlikaya said on X.

Along with Aktaş, police seized various assault rifles, ammunition, hand grenades and other materials in the raid.

In Istanbul, police captured 35 suspects looking to conduct street riots for the terrorist group.

The Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office ordered the detention of 44 suspects in an ongoing investigation and found 34 were in the PKK’s so-called youth branch plotting violent riots across the city.

Prosecutors found three of the suspects were trained in the PKK’s rural camps before being sent to Istanbul while six others were providing the terrorist group with funds.

Yerlikaya later on Friday said 176 more suspects were nabbed in nationwide raids, from western Izmir to eastern Kars province.

The PKK suspects spread terrorist propaganda and attended pro-PKK rallies where they blocked roads, burned ties and threw Molotov cocktails at security forces, Yerlikaya said, noting dozens of unlicensed guns, rifles and drugs were seized along with the suspects.

The raids have been in response to a PKK attack on the Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) in Ankara that killed five people and injured 22 others on Wednesday.

The PKK took up arms against the Turkish state in 1984 to achieve a so-called Kurdish self-rule in southeastern regions and is designated a terrorist organization by Ankara, as well as the United States and the European Union.

Its bloody terror campaign has been responsible for the deaths of over 40,000 people in the country since then. Kurdish residents in southeastern provinces suffered the brunt of PKK violence, losing children and loved ones to forced recruitment, their homes to bombing strikes and regional peace to the PKK’s brutality and harsh state measures to contain it.

The conflict with the PKK is now more focused on the mountains of northern Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG)-administered region, where PKK militants have their headquarters in Qandil, which sits roughly 40 kilometers (25 miles) southeast of the Turkish border in Irbil, but the terrorists still maintain hideouts in southeastern Türkiye.