Baghdad summons Turkish ambassador over airstrikes within Iraqi airspace

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – On Thursday, the Iraqi foreign minister summoned the Turkish ambassador in Baghdad and delivered him a memorandum of protest against airstrikes Ankara conducted this week against alleged Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) positions in the Kurdistan Region and a refugee camp in the disputed city of Makhmour.

“The ministry condemns, in the strongest possible terms, the attack carried out by the Turkish side which resulted in the loss of life and property damage," said Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Ahmed Sahaf. 

Turkish warplanes conducted several airstrikes on Tuesday and Wednesday, which, according to local media reports and sources who spoke to Kurdistan 24, resulted in several deaths among both civilians and PKK fighters, plus significant damage to the property of residents and farmers.

The Makhmour camp— eponymously named after a town disputed between the Kurdistan Regional Government and the federal Iraqi government—receives regular assistance from the United Nations. Its inhabitants fled Turkey into the Kurdistan Region in the mid-1990s, a decade of Turkish-led violence marked by extrajudicial killings, disappearances, and depopulation of thousands of villages in Kurdish provinces of the country. Turkey claims the PKK gets its recruits from the Makhmour camp.

Turkey, along with the US and EU, considers the PKK a "terrorist" organization. The guerilla group has fought a decades-long insurgency with Ankara for expanded Kurdish rights in Turkey.

A statement Thursday by Iraq's Joint Operations Command, which coordinated national military and police forces, read, "We deplore the violation of Iraqi airspace by Turkish fighter jets, which took place on Wednesday morning and targeted a refugee camp near Makhmour." 

It added, "This provocative behaviour is inconsistent with the principles of good neighbourliness in accordance with the international agreements, and is a flagrant violation of Iraqi sovereignty," stressing "the need to stop these violations in respect of and commitment to the common interests between the two countries."

Turkey’s anti-PKK operations in the autonomous region and northern parts of Iraq come after apparent decreased activity over recent months. In March, however, the The PKK claimed in recent days to have killed over 100 Turkish commandoes active in the border areas of the Kurdistan Region.

After the airstrikes, the Turkish defense ministry said on Twitter that it had “neutralized”—a dehumanizing term used by Ankara to refer to the death, capture, or wounding of “terrorists”—four PKK operatives in the Qandil region, specifying that it had used reconnaissance drones to spot its targets.

Over the past few years, Turkey has stepped up airstrikes against the PKK, launching several military operations targeting the group’s bases in the Kurdistan Region and the Yezidi (Ezidi) city of Sinjar (Shingal) near the Syrian border where an Ezidi militia group affiliated with the PKK operates.

Turkish forces have crossed into the region up to 20 kilometers deep in some areas to target PKK fighters. 

Editing by John J. Catherine