The National Intelligence Organization (MIT) has eliminated a red-category wanted PKK/YPG terrorists in a precision strike in northern Syria’s Tal Rifaat region, Turkish security sources said Monday.
Yaşar Çekik, code-named "Yaşar Hakkari," was the so-called head of PKK/YPG’s Shahba region, sources said.
In addition to being wanted by Interpol, Çekik had been in the red category of Türkiye’s wanted terrorist list due to the terrorist attacks he carried out against Turkish security forces in Türkiye, Syria and Iraq.
The terrorist, a top priority target for MIT, had been under surveillance for a long time. MIT discovered that Çekik, originally the head of the PKK/YPG’s Cezire operations, was reassigned to Shahba after Ali Dinçer, another wanted PKK/YPG terrorist, was eliminated by MIT.
Sources said Çekik first joined the PKK/YPG in 1993 and was trained alongside PKK ringleader Abdullah Öcalan. He was later named the head of PKK/YPG operations in Türkiye’s eastern Şırnak province.
Between 2005 and 2006, Çekik managed terrorist activities in northern Iraq’s Zap region. From 2007 to 2010, he operated in Türkiye's eastern Hakkari province and again in northern Iraq until 2014.
In 2014, the terrorist group moved him to Syria to manage its operations in the Tal Tamir region. For two years, Çekik served as the head of so-called brigade forces in Syria.
From Syria, Çekik moved to Iraq in 2017, where he served in the PKK’s so-called special forces division. In Gara, he gave military, political and ideological training to new recruits. He was injured in Makhmour in June 2017 before continuing his activities.
He managed PKK/YPG activities in Sinjar in 2019 before moving back to Syria, where he took over the terrorist group’s "Syria corporations command."
In 2021, when the terrorist group was named as the head of the so-called Cezire operations, he co-chaired terrorist activities with Dinçer.
According to security sources, Çekik had a long rap sheet, including many deadly attacks he orchestrated on Turkish soil.
He organized the attack on a gendarmerie command station in eastern Hakkari’s Çukurca district on July 20, 2010, which killed six soldiers.
Çekik personally supervised an attack on a military base in Çukurca on Oct. 19, 2011, which killed 24 and injured 18 soldiers.
In 2012, Çekik planned and ordered two more attacks in Çukurca, one in February which took place simultaneously on six locations, killing one soldier and injuring 13 gendarmerie personnel, and another in September on a military convoy in a village, which left four soldiers dead and five others wounded.
In 2021, while the head of the "martyr cemşit brigade" in Syria, Çekik gave instructions for various attacks on Turkish security forces stationed across the Operation Peace Spring region and the Şanlıurfa border.
Çekik had seven to eight vehicles prepared stacked with over half a ton of explosives, which would be remotely controlled or used in suicide attacks against security forces, but the plan was thwarted by security forces.
MIT stepped up its operations against terrorist groups abroad in recent years. Counterterrorism operations largely target PKK and its affiliates. They concentrate on northern parts of Türkiye's neighbors Syria and Iraq, where the terrorist group exploits a security vacuum to operate freely.
The precision strike also comes amid turmoil in Syria’s 13-year-long civil war, where anti-regime groups have been making unprecedented advances against Assad’s regime from the north, including capturing key cities like Aleppo and Idlib.