Intelligence eliminates PKK’s ‘youth’ coordinator in Iraq
A MEMBER of the PKK terrorist group in charge of the “youth wing” in Iran was eliminated in northern Iraq by Turkish intelligence, security sources said Thursday.
The National Intelligence Organization (MİT) located Barzan Hesenzade, codenamed “Tolhildan Kandil,” in a rural part of Qandil, a mountainous area known as a stronghold of the terrorist group.
Hesenzade, who joined the terrorist group in 2016, was in touch with the PKK’s ringleaders Cemil Bayık and Duran Kalkan. He was involved in recruitment efforts for the PKK.
The PKK terrorist group often hides out in northern Iraq, just across Türkiye’s southern border, to plot terrorist attacks in Türkiye.
MİT is shrouded in secrecy and its workings have remained under wraps for decades; but since 2010, the agency has been undergoing what has been broadly described as a “revolution” through which it launched headline-making cross-border anti-terrorism operations and busted spy networks at home.
The Aug. 15, 2018 killing of the PKK’s so-called administrative council member Ismail Özden in an air-backed strike in northern Iraq was the MİT’s first major overseas operation against PKK in years. The following year, the agency went on to eliminate many of the group’s spokespersons and foreign affairs representatives. In 2020, it dealt a major blow to the group’s Syrian branch by eliminating Sofi Nurettin, the highest-ranking member of its armed wing ever killed.
In 2021, it took out Ali Haydar Kaptan, one of the founding members, in a joint operation with TSK. In 2023, Daesh leader Abu Hussein al-Qurashi was killed by the MİT’s special operations team in Syria.