ISTANBUL: Turkiye announced on Sunday it had carried out air strikes against the bases of outlawed Kurdish militants across northern Syria and Iraq, which it said were being used to launch “terrorist” attacks on Turkish soil.
The offensive, codenamed Operation Claw-Sword, comes a week after a blast in central Istanbul that killed six people and wounded 81.
Turkiye blamed the attack on the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has waged a bloody insurgency there for decades and is designated a terror group by Ankara and its Western allies. The PKK has denied involvement in the Istanbul explosion.
“Air Operation Claw-Sword was successfully carried out, within the scope of our strategy to eradicate terrorism at its source and eliminate terror attacks against our people and security forces from northern Iraq and Syria,” the defence ministry said in a statement.
Rights group says 31 including Syrian soldiers, journalist killed; three Turkish security officials wounded in rocket attack
The raids targeted PKK bases in northern Iraq’s mountainous regions of Kandil, Asos and Hakurk, as well as bases of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), in Ayn al-Arab (called Kobane in Kurdish), Tal Rifaat, Jazira and Derik regions in Syria, the ministry said. Ankara considers the YPG an extension of the PKK.
Of all, 89 targets including shelters, bunkers, caves, tunnels, ammunition depots, so-called headquarters and training camps belonging to the militants “were destroyed”, the ministry said, adding “many terrorists were neutralised”, including the leaders of militant groups.
“All our planes safely returned to their bases after the operation,” it added.
Defence Minister Hulusi Akar was seen in an image briefing President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who gave the order for the latest operation, which the Syrian defence ministry said killed a number of its soldiers.
‘Hour of reckoning’
After the explosion, Turkish authorities arrested more than a dozen people, including chief suspect Alham Albashir — a Syrian woman who is said to have been working for Kurdish militants.
Bulgaria has also detained five people accused of having helped one of the suspects.
“The hour of reckoning has come,” the Turkish defence ministry tweeted early on Sunday, along with a photo of a plane taking off for a night operation.
“Terrorist hotbeds razed by precision strikes,” the ministry said in another post, which was accompanied by a video showing a target being selected from the air followed by an explosion.
In its first comment on the Turkish strikes, the Syrian defence ministry said “a number of soldiers” were killed due to “Turkish aggressions in northern Aleppo and Hassakeh provinces at dawn”.
The strikes killed at least 31 people, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a Britain-based monitoring group that has an extensive network of contacts across the country.
Nearly 25 strikes hit Raqa, Hassakeh and Aleppo provinces, killing 18 members of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, 12 members of Syria’s military and one journalist, said the SOHR.
The autonomous Kurdish administration in northeastern Syria meanwhile gave a toll of 29 dead — including 11 civilians, 15 fighters aligned with Syria’s military, two silo guards and one Kurdish fighter.
Turkiye’s military has in the past denied claims that its strikes target civilians.
Retaliation
One Turkish soldier and two police officials were wounded as result of a rocket fired at Turkiye’s province of Kilis near the Syrian border on Sunday, state-owned Anadolu Agency reported.
Anadolu said the rocket hit an area near a border gate but did not elaborate further. Earlier, the SDF had said the attack “will not go unanswered” and vowed to respond “at the appropriate time and place, we will respond forcefully and effectively.”
‘Bombing threatens whole region’
Turkiye’s latest military push could create problems for Ankara’s complex relations with its Western allies — particularly the United States, which has relied mostly on Syrian Kurdish militia forces in its fight against IS jihadists.
But Turkiye considers the YPG a terror group linked to the PKK and has often accused Washington of supplying arms to the Kurdish militias in Syria.
“Turkish bombing of our safe areas threatens the whole region,” Mazloum Abdi, the chief commander of the US-allied SDF, tweeted.
Turkiye has launched waves of attacks on Syria since 2016 targeting Kurdish militias as well as IS jihadists.
Published in Dawn, November 21st, 2022
