Terrorism remains a security priority for Türkiye, although an intense campaign in the past decade reduced the threat. The PKK is the primary threat and the country seeks to eradicate it within its borders and beyond. Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said Wednesday that they “neutralized” 721 terrorists between Jan. 1 and Nov. 1, including 525 captured alive, 84 captured dead, five captured injured and 107 others who surrendered to Turkish authorities.
Addressing the planning and budget committee of the Turkish Parliament in the capital Ankara, Yerlikaya said security forces carried out 19,756 operations against the terrorist group in the same period. He noted that authorities foiled 126 acts of terrorism, including 104 attempted bombings in the past 10 months in operations against the PKK and left-wing terrorist groups.
Following the Oct. 1 attack that targeted Turkish national police headquarters in Ankara, the first major assault by the PKK in a big city after the Istiklal Street attack in Istanbul, which claimed six lives last year, Türkiye signaled that it may launch a new cross-border offensive against the terrorist group. In the meantime, the Interior Ministry launched a series of operations dubbed “Operation Heroes” and nabbed dozens of PKK suspects across the country.
The PKK controls swathes of land in Syria’s north under its U.S.-backed Syrian wing, the YPG. In Iraq’s mountainous north, the terrorist group’s leadership maintains hideouts.
The PKK is designated a terrorist group by Türkiye, the U.S., the U.K. and the European Union. It launched a campaign of violence in southeastern Türkiye in 1984 and over 40,000 people were killed as a result.
Türkiye renewed its counterterrorism campaign in the past decade after a brief lull. In Iraq, it launched the Claw Sword operation in 2022 to eliminate terrorists hiding in the mountainous regions of northern Iraq. The offensive continues with occasional precision strikes and “retaliation” strikes against terrorists engaging in harassment fire or trying to infiltrate into Türkiye to carry out attacks.
Yerlikaya said the PKK was on the brink of extinction thanks to security forces’ work, pointing out the transformation of areas in southeastern Türkiye that were once viewed unsafe due to PKK attacks, from oil-rich Gabar mountain to the scenic countryside of Hakkari, which now hosts youth festivals.
The minister said counterterrorism operations between January and November led to arrests of 1,178 PKK suspects. “The number of those joining the PKK almost dropped to zero,” he also said. Yerlikaya lauded the sit-in strike of the “Diyarbakır Mothers” in its fifth year and said the protest led to 46 reunions. The “Diyarbakır Mothers” is the name given to a group of women who started a sit-in outside the offices of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), which is accused of affiliation with the PKK, in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır. The protest of mothers, who were later joined by fathers of the youth brainwashed by the PKK and the HDP to join terrorist groups, convinced some young members of the group to return home, particularly from Iraq, and turn themselves in.
The minister also briefed the committee about operations targeting the Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ) and Daesh, two groups exploiting religion to draw support. Yerlikaya said that security forces carried out more than 5,800 operations against FETÖ suspects between January and November and arrested 1,343 out of 8,286 suspects detained.
The terrorist group, which long disguised itself as a religious movement with charities and schools, tried to seize power first in 2013. In 2016, its infiltrators in the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) gunned down dozens of people resisting a coup attempt masterminded by FETÖ leader Fetullah Gülen. Thousands of people with suspected links to FETÖ were expelled from the public sector and arrested in the aftermath of the coup attempt. The group’s senior cadres, including Gülen, however, remain at large. Gülen lives in the U.S., while most of the prominent names of the group took shelter in Europe, to the chagrin of Ankara.
Yerlikaya said security forces also carried out 1,149 operations against Daesh and “neutralized” 227 terrorists, while 524 Daesh suspects were arrested between January and November.
In 2013, Türkiye became one of the first countries to declare Daesh a terrorist group. The country has since been attacked by Daesh multiple times, with over 300 people killed and hundreds more injured in at least 10 suicide bombings, seven bomb attacks and four armed assaults. As a result, Türkiye launched operations at home and abroad to prevent further attacks, including several counterterrorism operations in Syria.
Terrorists from Daesh and other groups, such as the PKK and its Syrian wing, the YPG, rely on a network of members and supporters in Türkiye. In response, Ankara has been intensifying its crackdown on the terrorists and their links at home, conducting pinpoint operations and freezing assets to eliminate the terrorist groups by their roots.
Since its formal defeat in Iraq in 2017 and significant loss of territory in Syria since 2015, Daesh fighters have been leading their operations underground, besides losing their leaders to military operations. The group’s last three leaders, all Iraqis, were killed in Syria in recent years outside areas it once purported to rule.
The last Daesh leader, Abu al-Hassan al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, the successor of Abu Ibrahim al-Hashemi al-Qurayshi, who committed suicide during a U.S. raid earlier in 2022, was killed in mid-October last year by the Free Syrian Army (FSA) in southern Syria, as confirmed by the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM). The group’s founder, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was hunted down by the U.S. in a raid in Idlib in October 2019. Remaining Daesh militants, whose numbers reach thousands, mostly hide in remote territory across the region but still possess the ability to carry out significant insurgent-style attacks.
