The Turkish Army has issued a statement claiming 18 PKK fighters killed today, 12 of them in ground operations in the southeastern Hakkari Province, and the other six killed in airstrikes in northern Iraq, where they reported they’d destroyed four “targets.”
The attacks in Iraq were in the northernmost portion of the country, but with the PKK reportedly playing a role in the offensive around the ISIS-held city of Mosul, Turkish attacks on Kurdish targets within Iraq during that offensive threaten to be controversial.
Still, it wouldn’t be the only time Turkey has attacked people fighting against ISIS, with heavy strikes against the Kurdish YPG around the Syrian town of Afrin overnight killing around 200 Kurdish fighters. Turkey has continued attacking the YPG in the area for over 24 hours now.
Turkey has been fighting the PKK for decades now, and has repeatedly accusing the YPG of being an extension of the PKK, trying to clearly link the ongoing attacks in Syria to the attacks against Turkish Kurds and Iraqi Kurds.