Türkiye’s National Intelligence Organization (MIT) has eliminated a PKK sharpshooter preparing to attack Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) bases in northern Iraq, security sources said Thursday.
PKK terrorist Serdar Sönmez, code-named “Eziz Gabbar,” was eliminated in a precision strike in Iraq’s Hakurk region, sources informed.
The sharpshooter was instructed by the PKK’s so-called senior ringleaders to infiltrate the Turkish base to conduct reconnaissance and carry out an attack.
Sönmez joined the PKK in 2014 before moving to northern Iraq’s Mount Gara region, where the terrorist group has a hideout, to receive armed and ideological training.
He was active in the Qandil region before joining terrorists’ operations in Hakurk.
The PKK, which has massacred over 40,000 people in Türkiye in a four-decadelong terror campaign, is not designated a terrorist organization in Iraq but is banned from launching operations against Türkiye from Iraqi territory.
Since Turkish operations have driven its domestic presence to near extinction, the PKK has moved a large chunk of its operations to northern Iraq.
Ankara maintains dozens of military bases there, and it regularly launches operations against the PKK, which uses a stronghold in the Qandil Mountains, located roughly 40 kilometers (25 miles) southeast of the Turkish border in Irbil.
Since the start of the year, Ankara has hinted at a final summer offensive against the PKK in both northern Iraq and Syria, where the PKK operates with its local offshoot, the YPG.
Defense Minister Yaşar Güler said that the ongoing Operation Claw-Lock, launched in April 2022, would be completed before the winter to sever the ties between Syria and Qandil.
Türkiye aims to wipe out the PKK from its borders and create an approximately 40-kilometer-deep security corridor along the Iraqi and Syrian borders.
Both the TSK and the MIT have since ramped up strikes on the “terror corridor” in the region, indicating a wider offensive may already be underway.
