The Defense Ministry on Sunday announced that 16 members of the PKK terrorist group were eliminated in northern regions of Iraq and Syria, according to Daily Sabah.

The ministry said in a social media post that 15 terrorists were eliminated in the Operation Euphrates Shield and Operation Olive Branch areas of Syria. The areas cover several Syrian towns liberated from terrorist groups by Syrian opposition forces backed by the Turkish army in the past. Another terrorist was eliminated in Iraq’s Qandil, a mountainous area known as the main hideout of the PKK’s leadership.

The PKK has been responsible for the deaths of more than 40,000 people, including women, children, infants and the elderly, in its 40-year-long terror campaign against the Turkish state. The YPG is its Syrian offshoot that has exploited the power vacuum during the Syrian civil war to occupy swathes of oil and gas-rich land and create a self-styled entity in northeastern Syria.

Both the TSK and Turkish intelligence regularly carry out strikes in PKK/YPG-held areas.

Türkiye controls two large strips of territory along the border after expelling PKK/YPG forces in successive campaigns. Ankara says it aims to create a security strip along its Syrian and Iraqi borders and sever the ties between the YPG and PKK strongholds in northern Iraq’s Qandil region.

Defense Minister Yaşar Güler has said an ongoing operation launched in northern Iraq in April 2022 would be finalized before the winter. Turkish airstrikes have ramped up in the region since.

The PKK is not recognized as a terrorist group in Iraq but is banned from launching attacks on Türkiye from Iraqi soil.

Baghdad in March outlawed the PKK and agreed in August to military cooperation that will see joint training and command centers against the terrorists, but Ankara wants Iraq to fully recognize it as a terrorist organization.