Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has told members of the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), supported by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, are looking for to infiltrating Turkey from Syria and that Turkey might give a start to operations in Syria to cease it.
According to remarks created by Erdoğan on the Gündem Özel (Special Agenda) television program on ATV on Sunday evening, Assad is supporting the terrorist organization in Syria, and the organization is later dribbling into Turkey. “Assad was about to break his connects with [the PKK] in the past, when he had relations with Turkey based on goodwill. But it has been disclosed that he abides the PKK,” he told.
The prime minister’s notes arrived in the aftermath of coincidental attacks on 4 military outposts in the southeast province of Hakkari by PKK terrorists on Sunday. The attacks left 6 soldiers and 2 village guards dead. 14 terrorists were also killed in clashes with Turkish security forces.
Erdoğan powerfully appropriated the attacks on Sunday afternoon, telling the “terrorist group showed its aggression to Turkey’s national and moral values by assaulting security forces during Ramadan.” He also implied Syria could be behind the assault, but didn’t complicate, adding that terrorist groups and their aides aiming Turkey’s brotherhood, integrity and peace will be nothing more than “dark spots” in history.
Demanded whether Turkey is probably to give a start to military operations in Syria to check the percolation of PKK members, Erdoğan stated: “Who knows that we’ll not do it? Our 3 military units are doing exercises on the [Turkish-Syrian] border. The tomb of Suleyman Shah [grandfather of Osman I, founder of the Ottoman Empire], is still Turkish soil. We’ll not be a bystander to any wrong done [against the tomb] there.”
During the television program, the prime minister also declared that the Turkish military will carry on its operations in the north of neighboring Iraq as long as the PKK remains to live there. “We’ll keep on our operations, and will never cease. If [the PKK] keeps on existing as a threat to us, we’ll arrange our operations [in northerly Iraq] and then come back to Turkey,” he stated.
Listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the European Union and the United States, the PKK has been executing a bloody war in Turkey’s Southeast since 1984. Dozens of soldiers have been killed in clashes with the PKK over the past months.
Erdoğan also supplied information about a operation in the district of Şemdinli in Hakkari, which has been in progress for more than a week. He told a total of 115 PKK terrorists have been killed by security forces since the operation started. The operation was started when terrorists barricaded the road of a village in the region and questioned villagers. The prime minister rebutted media reports that several Turkish soldiers have been killed in the operation.
According to Erdoğan, Turkey won’t arrive at concessions in its fight against terror. “We’ll keep on the fight without making concessions on law, democracy and human rights. … The solution is the laying down of arms by the terrorist group. Security forces never lay down arms. Weapons are the natural instruments of security forces,” he added.
