The Turkish Armed Forces (TAF), who started the Syria Euphrates Shield Operation, also launched a comprehensive operation to stifle the outlawed Kurdistan Worker's Party's (PKK) terrorist elements within the country. Operations were concentrated in Hakkari's rural area, Çukurca. The first target: to destroy a PKK training camp in the Kazan Valley and stop the flow of terrorists from Iraq into Turkey. It is estimated that 400 terrorists are sheltered in the camps.
Turkish military's simultaneous operation
Details of the operation launched by TAF in the Hakkari- Çukurca countryside a week ago began to see daylight. The real objective of the Çukurca Operation, which was launched simultaneously with the Euphrates Shield operation focused on Daesh and PKK terrorists in Syria, was to cut the supply routes in Turkey of the PKK, which was pre-occupied with difficult situations elsewhere.
According to the information received from the security sources, a large camp exists in the Kazan Valley in rural Çukurca. Just behind this major, strategic gathering place for the PKK terrorist organization, lies Iraqi land and roads to the PKK's camps, Hakurk and Avaşin. Nearly 400 terrorists are housed there, and it is assumed that trained terrorists either from or sent to Syria or Iraq are sheltered there as well.
After completing their training, it's believed that the terrorists are deployed to various areas in Turkey. Turkey's air forces are trying to eliminate this terrorist turf in the attacks they conduct from time to time in the cross-border air raids. In the first phase, the terrorists from the area's Hantepe and Kaletepe were incapacitated. After attacking certain points of the valley, the main PKK camp will be destroyed.
This operation is being noticed as the first one of its kind after four years. The operation was planned in 2015, but following the PKK's Dağlıca attack of September 7, 2015, in which 16 soldiers were martyred, it was delayed, focusing all attention on Dağlıca. Last week, the operations started in Çukurca led to the deaths of 10 soldiers and more than 160 terrorists.
Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım had recently observed and visited the operations center in Çukurca.
In his speech to the troops, Turkish PM said, "Particularly after July 15, we put forward a new road map for the fight against terrorism. Not defense; we are on the offensive," he said.
"In a short time, we will take this area under control, then we will aim all of our power on the 10-12 areas where they are clustered in our country. For those who have engaged for years in keeping our country busy with these nests for years, we will level this terrorist organization," Yıldırım said.
In the Hakurk and Medina regions of Northern Iraq and Turkey's Hakkari province's Çukurca town, the shelters and caves of the separatist terrorist organization using weapons were destroyed.
According to a statement on the General Staff's website, an air campaign flattened the targets belonging to the separatist terrorist organization in Hakkari's Çukurca and in northern Iraq's Hakurk. Combat aircraft, weapons belonging to a terrorists, shelters, quarters and caves were destroyed.
