Türkiye and Iraq appoint generals to fight the PKK

Sources in the Turkish Defense Ministry revealed further details of a security pact signed last week between Ankara and Baghdad. Sources said on Thursday that a joint security coordination center will be set up in the Iraqi capital, headed by generals from both countries. A security and training center will also be set up at the Bashiqa military base in northern Iraq, they said.

Earlier this month, senior diplomats from both countries met in the capital Ankara, and Ankara and Baghdad held the fourth round of their high-level security mechanism.

The two countries share a long border, which was a crossing point for the PKK terrorist group into Turkey. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's visit to Iraq on April 22 marked a turning point in relations between Ankara and Baghdad, particularly in the fight against the PKK terrorist group entrenched in Iraq.

The neighbors have been at loggerheads in recent years over Ankara's cross-border military operations against the PKK in the mountainous region of northern Iraq controlled by the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). Iraq calls the operations a violation of its sovereignty, while Ankara says they are necessary for its own protection.

Turkish sources said the text of the security pact circulated by some media was false and that the original pact covered cooperation in many areas, from training troops and law enforcement, counterterrorism, joint border security, fighting illegal migration and infiltration across the borders of both countries, fighting smuggling and organized crime, information sharing and defense. Also on Thursday, the Center for Combating Disinformation, a subsidiary of the Turkish Presidential Communications Directorate, rejected claims that the security pact would end the presence of Turkish troops in Iraqi areas, saying in a statement that the pact did not contain such a clause as claimed.

According to sources, the Joint Security Coordination Centre will also be staffed by civilian personnel and the two countries will hold further discussions on the number of personnel and their work.

As for the Bashika Training and Cooperation Center, it was said that it will provide Turkey and Iraq with a platform for exchanging experience and information on security. “The memorandum of understanding signed between the two countries is primarily aimed at eliminating threats posed by terrorist or banned groups to the sovereignty and security of the two countries and regional security,” the sources said.

The PKK has been waging a bloody terror campaign against Turkey since 1984, killing over 40,000 people. The PKK is considered a terrorist organization in Turkey, the United States and the European Union and has strongholds in northern Iraq, from where it carries out attacks in Turkey.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein said at a joint press conference with his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan in Ankara earlier this month that the presence of PKK terrorists in northern Iraq posed “a danger to the Kurdistan Region and other Iraqi cities” and posed a threat to Iraqi society.

“The Iraqi government has decided to put the PKK on the list of banned parties,” he added.

Since the PKK has almost completely wiped out its domestic presence due to Turkish operations, it has shifted a large part of its operations to northern Iraq.

Ankara maintains dozens of military bases there and regularly conducts operations against the PKK, which operates from a stronghold in the Qandil Mountains, about 40 kilometers southeast of the Turkish border near Erbil.

Since the beginning of the year, Ankara has hinted at a final summer offensive against the PKK in both northern Iraq and Syria, where the PKK operates with its local offshoot YPG.

Defense Minister Yaşar Güler recently said that the ongoing Operation Claw-Lock, launched in April 2022 with the aim of severing relations between Syria and Qandil, will be completed before winter.

Turkey's aim is to expel the PKK from its territory and create a security corridor about 40 kilometers wide along the Iraqi and Syrian border.

Both the Turkish intelligence agency MIT and the Turkish armed forces TSK have since stepped up their attacks on the “terror corridor” in the region, suggesting that a more comprehensive offensive may already be underway.

Brigadier Admiral Zeki Aktürk, spokesman for the Defense Ministry, told reporters at a press conference in the capital Ankara on Thursday that security forces eliminated 38 terrorists in operations against the PKK last week. Aktürk added that with the recent operations in Iraq and Syria, the number of terrorists eliminated between January 1 and last week reached 1,763.