Turkey says won't allow PKK stay in Shingal

ANKARA, Turkey (Kurdistan24) - Turkey's Minister of Foreign Affairs Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Monday that his country would not allow the Ezidi Kurdish town of Shingal (Sinjar) to become "a second Qandil" for the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

Since the late 1980s, the PKK central command and main training camps are based in the Qandil mountain range that stretches along the border which separates the Kurdistan Region from the Iranian Kurdistan.

Speaking at a joint press conference in the Turkish capital of Ankara alongside his French counterpart Jean-Marc Ayrault, Cavusoglu declared that Turkey would use its "rights and power deriving from the international law to intervene more actively" against the PKK presence in Iraq.

Turkish Government argues the bases which the PKK has set up in Shingal and the nearby mountain after it came to the aid of Ezidis fleeing from the Islamic State (IS) group in the summer of 2014 could be used as a springboard for attacks in Turkey.

"They [PKK] want to turn Shingal into a second Qandil. We will make sure that the region is a safe one for us by the measures we are going to take," continued the Turkish FM without further specifying, reported Kurdistan24 bureau in Ankara.

Cavusoglu's remarks on PKK bases in Shingal came after his earlier avowal on Saturday not stand idly by as PKK fighters were spotted alongside Peshmerga forces fighting the IS militants in the city of Kirkuk when it came under a surprise attack by sleeper cells there.

Editing by Ava Homa