Turkiye neutralizes 29 PKK members in northern Syria

Shafaq News/ On Friday, the Turkish Ministry of National Defense announced the neutralization of 29 members of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in northern Syria.

The ministry stated in a post on X that those members were preparing to launch attacks in northern Syria.

No further details were provided so far.

Turkiye uses the term “neutralize” to indicate that a member has been killed or captured.

Notably, Turkiye has recently intensified the operations against the PKK, which operates in several countries in the region, including Iraq, Syria, and Iran.

The early 2000s saw intermittent ceasefires and attempts at peace negotiations, including a notable peace process in 2013. However, this process collapsed in 2015, leading to renewed hostilities.

The conflict between Turkiye and the PKK has its origins in the early 1980s when the PKK began its armed struggle for an independent Kurdish state within Turkiye. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, this conflict escalated into a full-scale insurgency, with the PKK employing guerrilla tactics and the Turkish military responding with major operations targeting PKK strongholds, both within Turkiye and across the border in northern Iraq.