“Türkiye is no longer a country where terrorism shapes the politics,” President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Monday, two days after authorities announced 12 Turkish soldiers were killed by the PKK terrorist group in Iraq’s north. The president stated that Türkiye would not be deterred by acts of terrorism on its path to the future.
The attack, one of the deadliest targeting Turkish troops abroad in recent memory, stirred up emotions in Türkiye, which has battled the PKK since the 1980s. The Turkish army was quick to retaliate while the political scene was mired in a debate over the attack.
On Monday, the Ministry of National Defense disclosed the death toll that Turkish airstrikes inflicted upon the terrorist group. The ministry said the airstrikes targeted “terrorist targets” and “neutralized” at least 26 terrorists, a term used to describe terrorists captured alive or dead. The strikes were carried out in the regions immediately across the Turkish border with Iraq and Syria.
Border regions in both countries are favored hideouts of the terrorist group, which has been targeting Türkiye for more than 40 years. The statement said the work to assess the total body count is still underway. Defense Minister Yaşar Güler announced on Sunday that 30 terrorists were eliminated since the deaths of 12 soldiers on Friday and Saturday. Thus, the total number of PKK casualties reached at least 56.
Following the attack that targeted a Turkish military outpost in a mountainous region of Iraq, authorities vowed to retaliate against the killings, and the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) announced a series of airstrikes and operations to destroy PKK targets in Iraq and Syria. In a press release on its website on Saturday, the ministry said, “29 targets, including caves, bunkers, shelters, oil installations and warehouses, were destroyed” during the operation carried out at 10 p.m. (7 p.m. GMT). Güler oversaw the airstrikes at the Command Center of Air Forces. He congratulated the pilots who took part in the operation, along with senior commanders of the Turkish Armed Forces. More than 2,150 PKK terrorists have been “neutralized” since Jan. 1, Güler said Sunday.
Erdoğan, who was speaking at an event at Istanbul’s Sabiha Gökçen airport on Monday, said plans to divide Türkiye through terrorism cannot “work anymore.”
“We don’t allow the fraternity between 85 million people to be hurt. Whoever attacks our unity through the actions of those traitors serves the purpose of terrorism. I call upon our youth not to fall for traps of provocateurs,” Erdoğan said.
“I warn those looking to daunt us through terrorism. You tried everything in the past 21 years, but you could not hinder our sacred journey,” Erdoğan said, referring to the winning streak of the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) and his own successful tenure as prime minister and president. “You cannot thwart the building of 'Century of Türkiye,'” Erdoğan added, referring to his ambitious vision for a series of reforms to improve Türkiye’s economy and social life.
“You lost repeatedly and you will lose again. We know your plots. As long as our revered nation supports us, we will continue our fight (against terrorism),” he said.
The president also lashed out at politicians siding with the terrorist group and those “collaborating” with them.
“We are determined to unmask political chameleons doing everything they can to avoid defining terrorists as terrorists,” he said, in a pointed reference to the Green Left Party (YSP), informally known as the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party). The YSP was among those not joining the AK Party and three other parties in Parliament, which issued a joint declaration last week to condemn the PKK over the killing of 12 soldiers.
The main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which sought an alliance with the YSP in upcoming municipal and past presidential elections, also abstained from joining the declaration because it said it was insufficient to eradicate terrorism. The CHP, however, faced a barrage of criticism for not openly naming the PKK as the group responsible for the killings of soldiers in a separate statement it issued later. Party Chairperson Özgür Özel was confronted by an angry crowd asking him to leave while he was attending the funeral of one of the martyred soldiers on Sunday.
“Someone showed up in Manisa, but the nation knew well who he was,” Erdoğan said on Monday about the funeral where Özel was booed.
Political opponents of the YSP have repeatedly called for the closure of the party for its links to terrorism. The Constitutional Court still did not decide on the closure of the HDP, the previous incarnation of YSP, whose entire cadres switched to the new party. Devlet Bahçeli, chair of government ally Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), expressed his discontent with the YSP and its partner CHP on Monday as he left Parliament when lawmakers of the YSP took to the pulpit.
“I am doing what Constitutional Court should do,” Bahçeli told reporters as he left the Parliament. “I won’t listen to speeches of the CHP either. My friends are joining me now,” he said as other MHP lawmakers left Parliament en masse.
The PKK, designated a terrorist group by Türkiye, the United States and the European Union, launched a campaign of terrorism in the 1980s in southeastern Türkiye. Its attacks then spread to the western cities, and in more than four decades, the terrorist attacks claimed the lives of thousands.
Turkish forces regularly carry out strikes in neighboring Iraq as part of its offensive against PKK terrorists based there. Operations targeting the PKK also concentrated in Syria’s northeast after civil war broke out in Syria. The PKK’s Syria wing, the YPG, seized control of northeastern Syrian towns bordering Türkiye amid a power vacuum. Social media posts on Monday from Qamishli, a Syrian town controlled by the YPG, showed smoke billowing over several buildings, including a mill supplying food to terrorists and a textile workshop that also supplies the group, after a supposed airstrike by Turkish forces. Türkiye did not confirm the strikes. A video shows a group of PKK supporters, again in Qamishli, holding a news conference before they flee as the ground is visibly shaken, apparently due to an airstrike.
On Sunday, police also detained 52 people at a youth event organized by the YSP in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır.
Justice Minister Yılmaz Tunç said on social media platform X that the suspects were charged with “praising crime and the criminal” and “spreading terrorist organization propaganda,” and added arrest warrants were issued for others. Videos and photos on social media showed participants chanting slogans in support of the PKK’s jailed leader, Abdullah Öcalan and carrying his posters. YSP’s co-chair, Tuncer Bakırhan, told the same event that they would be the voice of eliminated terrorists after he recited the names of those eliminated by Turkish forces.
Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya later said that authorities had started investigations into 57 social media accounts accused of posting content against the Turkish Armed Forces and added four people had been detained as part of the operation.
“Those trying to sow seeds of discord among our people, praise terror, and insult our national and moral values will continue to be held accountable in front of the law,” Yerlikaya said on X.
