A Turkish soldier has been killed by PKK terrorist harassment fire in northern Iraq, Türkiye’s Defense Ministry announced Wednesday.
Sgt. Habip Murat Alp was martyred after the PKK terrorists opened fire during a routine field search in the northern Iraqi region where Türkiye has been conducting Operation Claw-Lock, the ministry said in a statement on X.
Defense Minister Yaşar Güler, too, sent his condolences to Alp's family.
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.
The PKK also occupies Sinjar, Makhmour and has a foothold in Sulaymaniyah, which sits in northern Iraq’s semiautonomous north controlled by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), where the central Iraqi government has little influence.
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.
Güler recently said that 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 a 30-40-kilometer-deep security corridor along the Iraqi and Syrian borders.
Both the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) and the National Intelligence Organization (MIT) have ramped up strikes on the "terror corridor" in the region, especially Gara and Metina, where in December, the PKK killed 21 Turkish soldiers.
Unconfirmed reports say the Turkish army is already advancing along a road connecting Iraq to Syria and has occasionally carried out operations since last month.
Türkiye's cross-border operations into northern Iraq have been a source of tension with its southeastern neighbor for years. Ankara has asked Iraq for more cooperation in combating the PKK.
Iraq stopped short of defining PKK as a terrorist group, but last March, it banned the group from operating in the country after talks with Turkish officials and before a landmark visit by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to Baghdad. Last month, the government instructed all state institutions to refer to the PKK as a banned group in official correspondence.
In April, it set up two military bases in the Zakho region.