Turkish troops have targeted the Zap and Metina mountains in northern Iraq in military operations that have intensified since the summer of 2020, with the most recent operation, dubbed Operation Claw-Lightning, launching on April 23.
“We are under daily attacks and bombings,” Heval Ako from the Keste village told the newspaper. “Many people have left.”
In three occasions during Turkey’s operations in the Dohuk province, locals have accused Turkish forces of using chemical weapons against the outlawed PKK.
A total of 504 Kurdish villages in the Dohuk and Erbil provinces have been evacuated since 1992 due to Turkish interventions, the Morning Star said, citing a 2020 report.
“Hundreds of people have been killed since 1992 and tens of thousands of people have been displaced as a result of the PKK-Turkey war,” Dr Rebwar Babkaye, one of the investigators for the report, told the Morning Star.
A resident of Qandil, which is home to both the PKK headquarters, civilian villages, and a U.N.-run refugee camp, told the newspaper that Turkish operations didn’t distinguish between civilians and PKK fighters.
The Turkish army “drops bombs to try and scare us,” the resident said, likening the Turkish president to Saddam Hussein and adding, “They know the PKK is not here. But they do not care.”
Iraqi officials have voiced concern over Turkey’s increased presence in the north, and Baghdad has summoned the Turkish envoy in early May over the Turkish defence minister’s visit to troops on Iraqi soil.
Turkey aims to build a base in Metina and use it to monitor the region. “This area is a route to Qandil, we will control this route,” Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said in May.
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