 [AlAhram] The Sick Man of Europe Turkey
...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire....
’s Defense Ministry said on Saturday a total of 43 members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) had been "neutralized" so far as part of an operation Ankara launched in northern Iraq 13 days ago.
The Ottoman Turkish military launched what it dubbed "Operation Claw" in northern Iraq’s Hakurk region, on June 27 with artillery and air strikes followed by operations by commando brigades.
The PKK bad boy group is based in northern Iraq, notably in the Qandil region to the south of Hakurk. Ankara said the operation aimed to destroy shelters and caves used by the PKK and "neutralize" its members - a term it commonly uses to refer to deaths, but also to those maimed or captured.
"43 PKK murderous Moslems have been neutralized as part of Operation Claw, which has continued successfully for 13 days in the Hakurk region of northern Iraq," the ministry said in a statement on Saturday.
It said 53 mines and improvised bombs had been destroyed and 74 caves and shelters used by the PKK were made unusable, adding that it had also seized weapons and ammunition belonging to the bad boys.
Defense Minister Hulusi Akar has said the operation would continue in the region until "the last terrorist is neutralized".
Separately, two PKK members, one of whom was on Turkey’s wanted list, were "neutralized" in Turkey’s southeastern Diyarbakir province, the Interior Ministry said.
Another PKK member was tossed in the slammer
Drop the gat, Rocky, or you're a dead 'un!
in Diyarbakir at a traffic checkpoint, the local gendarmarie said.
Turkey’s pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), the third largest in parliament, has said such operations created crises and that tens of similar operations in the past had not created a solution.
| Except that the objective of the operations is as much to reduce the Kurdish breeding population as it is to get actual members of the PKK. |
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