Iraq bans PKK after high-level security talks with Turkey
BAGHDAD –
Iraq’s National Security Council has banned the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been waging an armed campaign against the Turkish forces for Kurdish self-rule inside Turkey.
The decision was disclosed on Thursday in joint Iraqi-Turkish statement issued after a high-level security meeting in Baghdad.
“Turkey welcomes the Iraqi National Security Council’s decision to designate the PKK as a banned organisation in Iraq,” said the statement shared on both the Turkish and Iraqi foreign ministries’ websites.
The PKK, designated a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union, took up arms against the Turkish state in 1984. More than 40,000 people have been killed in the insurgency.
The conflict was long fought mainly in rural areas of southeastern Turkey but is now more focused on the mountains of northern Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region, where PKK militants are based.
Turkish foreign and defence ministers Hakan Fidan and Yasar Guler as well as intelligence chief Ibrahim Kalin on Thursday held counterterrorism talks with their counterparts in Baghdad.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Mohammed Hussein, Defence Minister Thabet al-Abbasi and other high-level Iraqi officials along with Kurdistan Regional Government’s Interior Minister Rebar Ahmed joined the talks, according to the statement.
Fidan’s chief adviser Nuh Yilmaz hailed the move as a “turning point.”
Turkey and Iraq “decided for the first time to jointly fight against PKK terrorism,” he wrote on X. “A decision that will mark a turning point! We will see the results gradually!”
The parties also agreed to set up joint committees to “work exclusively in the fields of counterterrorism, trade, agriculture, energy, water, health and transportation,” the statement said.
Speaking earlier this week, Guler said his country offered to establish “a joint operation centre” to strengthen the two countries’ coordination in Turkey’s fight against the PKK but they had failed to achieve progress on the matter.
Ankara has long been pressing Baghdad to designate the armed group a terrorist organisation. But the central Iraqi government has deemed Turkey’s operations against the group and its military outposts in the Iraqi territory as a violation of its sovereignty.
“The parties stressed the importance of Iraq’s political unity, sovereignty, and territorial integrity,” Thursday’s statement said. “They have also stressed that the PKK constitutes a security threat for both Turkey and Iraq.”
Ankara has ramped up cross-border operations against the PKK which is based in northern Iraq’s mountainous regions, and warned of new incursion to the region.
A Turkish defence ministry official said that officials from the Turkish army held talks with Iraqi counterparts over the weekend to discuss “measures to increase security of the civilians” in the region where Turkey is conducting operations.
Turkey has, since 2019, conducted a series of cross-border operations in northern Iraq against the PKK, dubbed “Claw.”
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