Turkish raids kill Kurds in Iraq and Syria
Ankara says air strikes, which killed more than 20 fighters affiliated with the Kurdish Workers’ Party, were within its legal rights
ERBIL // Up to 70 Kurdish fighters were killed yesterday when Turkey launched air strikes against Kurdish militia groups in Syria and Iraq.
Ankara attacked a key US ally during the strikes in Syria, as the strikes in Iraq escalated the stand-off between rival Kurdish parties. Turkish warplanes struck groups affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party in Syria’s north-eastern Hassakeh province and northern Iraq’s Sinjar area yesterday morning.
“To destroy these terror hubs which threaten the security, unity and integrity of our country and as part of our rights based on international law, air strikes have been carried out,” said the Turkish army yesterday.
It pledged continued action against groups linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which has been engaged in a decades-long insurgency in Turkey.
The army said it had killed 70 militants in the strikes but the groups targeted gave much lower death tolls.
In Syria, the attacks targeted the People’s Protection Units, a Syrian Kurdish militia, on Mount Karachok, near the city of Derik in Hassakeh province. At least 20 militia fighters were killed and 18 wounded, said the People’s Protection Units.
Because of the People’s Protection Units’ ties with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, Turkey regards them as a terrorist organisation that threatens its internal security.
The People’s Protection Units are receiving training, equipment and air support from the United States, and are widely regarded as ISIL’s most capable enemy in Syria.
They are part of the Syrian Democratic Forces, an umbrella organisation that is only a few kilometres from Raqqa, ISIL’s self-declared capital.
In Iraq, Turkey’s air force targeted positions of the Sinjar Resistance Units, a Yazidi affiliate of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, in Sinjar. The air strikes killed and wounded several fighters.
But five members of the Iraqi Kurdish armed forces, the peshmerga, also died in the attacks, and nine were wounded, said the Kurdistan regional government. It said a member of its internal security service was also killed.
The ministry of peshmerga said the deaths of its fighters were unacceptable but was quick to blame the Kurdistan Workers’ Party for the incident.
“We announce that all these problems are due to the presence of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party in the area, as they have made issues for the people of the Kurdistan region,” it said.
The Kurdistan regional government and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party have been jostling for control of Sinjar since ISIL was expelled from much of the area in November 2015.
Turkey has thrown its weight behind the Kurdistan Democratic Party, the dominant Kurdistan regional government party in Sinjar, in an effort to curb the Kurdistan Workers’ Party’s influence in the region near the Syrian border. “Turkey views north- ern Iraq from Kirkuk upwards as its sphere of influence,” said Kirk Sowell, publisher of the Inside Iraqi Politics newsletter.
“The strategic goal is to ensure the Kurdistan Democratic Party’s dominance in the area. Turkey can only exercise real influence through the Kurdistan Democratic Party ultimately.”
Sinjar is part of a vast area of territory straddling the autonomous Kurdish region that is claimed by the Kurdistan regional government and the Iraqi government. The dispute offers Turkey a chance to build its influence in an area nominally under Iraqi control. The town of Sinjar and the surrounding area are the heartland of the Yazidi religious minority. When ISIL launched a swift attack on Sinjar in August 2014, the peshmerga stationed in the area retreated, allowing the extremists to kill and abduct thousands of Yazidis.
The survivors were besieged on Mount Sinjar, the craggy ridge line that dominates the landscape in the area.
An attack by the People’s Protection Units attack launched from Syria in December 2015 broke through the encirclement, allowing tens of thousands of Yazidis to flee to safety.
The ISIL assault dented the popularity of the Kurdistan Democratic Party among the Yazidi community, while leading to a surge in recruits to the Sinjar Resistance Units. Both the peshmerga and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party maintained a heavy presence in Sinjar after ISIL was driven out of the city in 2015, and relations have remained fraught. ISIL remains lodged in the southern edge of the Sinjar region. But reconstruction and returns to the area have also been hampered by the intra-Kurdish rivalry and hundreds of thousands of Yazidis still live in displacement camps, unable or un- willing to return to their homes. “The tensions between the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party is the main reason people aren’t moving back to their homes. They expect a fight, and if they fight there will be a war,” said Dakheel Ismail, a Yazidi who joined the peshmerga.
Turkey regularly conducts air strikes against the bases of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party in the Qandil mountains near its border.