Turkey Conducts Joint Raid with Iran against PKK: Minister
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Iran and Turkey on Monday started a joint military operation against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) militant group on Turkey's eastern border, the Turkish interior minister said.
"We started staging a joint operation with Iran against the PKK on our eastern border as of 0800 (0500 GMT) this morning," Suleyman Soylu said as cited by state-run Anadolu news agency.
Earlier, the minister had said that the operation would be part of Turkey's efforts to eradicate the group after successfully blocking most of its inroads at the border and basically trapping the few hundred PKK militants left in the country.
Besides Turkey, the European Union and the US have also declared the PKK a terrorist organization. The militant group has been seeking an autonomous Kurdish region since 1984.
Over the past few months, Turkish ground and air forces have been carrying out operations against PKK positions in the country as well as in northern Iraq and neighboring Syria.
In January 2018, Ankara launched a cross-border military operation inside Syria, code-named Operation Olive Branch, with the declared aim of eliminating the Syrian Kurdish militants of the People's Protection Units (YPG).
