Türkiye’s National Intelligence Organization (MIT) has eliminated a top PKK member in a pinpoint operation in northern Iraq, security sources said Monday.
Sedat Aksu, code-named "Şevger Çiya," was the head of the terrorist group’s so-called council of executives. The PKK kept his death a secret for a long time due to his senior position but was forced to admit it later, sources said.
MIT found Aksu had personally ordered the attacks mounted against Turkish security forces in northern Syria in 2016. The terrorist was also in charge of the PKK’s armory in northern Iraq’s Gara region.
Aksu had been followed for a long period by MIT’s field agents who discovered he, under orders from PKK’s top brass, was supplying arms and ammunition to the PKK members preparing for an attack in the region where the Turkish Armed Forces are conducting Operation Claw-Lock.
Aksu joined the PKK’s rural ranks in 1998 and went on to take part in the terrorist group’s attacks on security forces in and around Türkiye’s eastern Şırnak province in 2000.
The following year, he moved to Iraq’s Haftanin region before coming back to the PKK’s domestic ranks in 2004 and going back to be trained at the group’s Haki Karaer Academy in northern Iraq in 2007.
By 2009, Aksu was training PKK recruits in Qandil, where the group has its stronghold.
By 2014, he was assigned a seat at the PKK’s so-called executive council and promoted to a ringleader in the group’s Syrian arm in 2016.
When he was targeted, he had been serving as a so-called executive at the PKK council in Iraq.
The PKK took up arms against the Turkish state in 1984 and is designated a terrorist organization by Ankara, as well as the United States and the European Union.
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.
The operations have regularly strained bilateral ties, but officials have repeatedly assured Türkiye's respect of Iraq's sovereignty and commitment to only targeting terrorists.
Ankara plans a new swoop in on the militants this summer and has sought Iraqi cooperation in the form of a joint operations room, as well as recognition by Baghdad of the PKK threat.
Iraq last month announced it had set up two military bases in its Zakho region and deployed troops to the region for the first time in over three decades.
Ankara is also preparing to provide Iraq with technical assistance for securing its borders to prevent the mobility of PKK around the region.
In Syria, the PKK operates through its local offshoot, the YPG, which has occupied a chunk of the civil war-torn country’s northeast since 2015, with military and material assistance from the United States.