Kurdish Official Killed In Intelligence Operation In Iraq, President Erdogan: We Continue To Fight Terrorism

Presiden Turki Recep Tayyip Erdogan. (Wikimedia Commons/Kremlin.ru/The Presidential Press and Information Office)

JAKARTA - Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that a top Kurdish official from the Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan (PKK) was killed in an intelligence operation, stressing that his party would continue to eradicate terrorism.

Launching The National News Monday, June 7, President Erdogan said the senior PKK official, known as Selman Bozkir, was killed in a Turkish intelligence operation carried out in Iraq.

In his statement, President Erdogan accused the PKK of using mountainous areas in northern Iraq as a springboard for an insurgency against the Turkish state.

"We will not allow this terrible separatist organization to use Makhmur as an incubator for terrorism", Erdogan said in a statement on Twitter Sunday, June 6.

"We will continue to eradicate terrorism at its source", said President Erdogan.

Apart from Selman Bozkir, the operation according to security sources also crippled two terrorists who were with him at the time. However, the names of the two were not revealed.

"Selman Bozkir, codenamed 'Doctor Huseyin', senior manager of the terrorist organization PKK and general manager of Makhmur (Iraq), was paralyzed by the heroes of our National Intelligence Organization (MIT) at Saturday", Erdogan said.

Bozkir is wanted by MIT because he served as a ringleader at the site, described as a refugee camp but actually serving as a recruitment and training ground for the Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan.

He had joined a terror group in the 1960s and organized its activities in Europe for many years. He was also in charge of his activities in England during that time.

Before being sent to Makhmur, Bozkir managed the flow of funds for terror groups in northern Iraq. Then he was in charge of Makhmur because the PKK was cornered by the Turkish operation in Qandil.

Separately, presidential communications director Fahrettin Altun warned, all terrorists will end up like him (Bozkir) and other terrorists who have been arrested.

Founded by the United Nations in the late 1990s to house Turkish Kurds, Makhmur Camp was hit on Saturday by a Turkish drone strike that killed three civilians, a Kurdish official from the camp told AFP.

Turkey, which accuses the PKK of running Makhmur Camp, 250 kilometers from the Turkish border, frequently carries out cross-border operations and airstrikes on the PKK's back base in Iraq.

Earlier this week Erdogan likened the Makhmur camp to the Qandil Mountain region along Iraq's eastern border, where the PKK has a base.

"If the UN does not clean this district, we will maintain it in our capacity as a UN member state", President Erdogan warned.

To note, Turkish troops have maintained a network of bases in northern Iraq since the mid-1990s, based on security agreements made with the government of the late Saddam Hussein.

Meanwhile, the PKK has waged an insurgency in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast since 1984, claiming more than 40,000 lives.