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Turkey deals heavy blow to PKK in cross-border operations

Saithan

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Turkey has killed more than 300 members of the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the aerial strikes launched against the organization since Aug. 17 following the PKK’s killing of dozens of soldiers in southeastern Turkey, intelligence reports said.
The country is preparing for a land operation following the Eid al-Fitr.

According to information from intelligence units, 320 PKK terrorists have been killed in the latest operations.

Turkey began launching aerial strikes against PKK hideouts in northern Iraq as of Aug. 17, when the PKK killed eight soldiers in a brutal attack in the Çukurca district of Hakkari.

The military operations against the PKK came following a statement by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who said he had lost patience with terrorists fighting in southeastern Turkey.

Turkish warplanes have bombed the PKK camps and logistics centers in the Zap, Avaşin-Basyan and Hakurk regions, which the PKK used as springboard to launch attacks against Turkey.

Turkey’s last land and air cross-border operation against the PKK took place in 2008. According to data from the Turkish General Staff, some 240 PKK terrorists were killed in these operations while 24 Turkish soldiers were martyred.

It is said that Iranian military operations against camps of the terrorist organizations around Mount Kandil since July 16 have also played a role in the PKK’s big loss in clashed with the Turkish military operations as the terrorist organization is being increasingly cornered.

Having its logistics centers destroyed, the PKK is unlikely to spend the winter around Mount Kandil. Intelligence reports warn that the PKK may carry out some sensational attacks in order to eliminate pressure on them, which has prompted Turkish security units to tighten security measures at home.
Turkey targets PKK leadership

It is said that the goal of the Turkish military operations against the PKK is to capture the terrorist organization’s leaders. A special team of 60 members reportedly participates in the operations against PKK camps to capture senior PKK leaders.

In the meantime, the controversy about the whereabouts of one of the PKK leaders, Murat Karayılan, continues. Early this month, Iranian intelligence units claimed having captured Karayılan; however, they later denied these reports, saying that Iran captured a high-level PKK member which is not Karayılan. The fact that Karayılan has not appeared since the news about his alleged capture broke, still keeps his situation a small mystery.

The terrorist PKK, which announced that it will release a video showing Karayılan in order to invalidate claims about his alleged capture, has still not released any such video. Instead of speaking to PKK-affiliated TV stations, Karayılan has opted for written statements. In consideration of Karayılan’s mysterious disappearance, experts say he might have really been captured by Iran or that he may have fled to another country or region.

On Saturday, İbrahim Şahin, head of the Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT), which was the first to broadcast the news about Karayılan’s capture by Iran on Aug. 14, said his institution is still stands by its coverage of Karayılan’s alleged capture.

“It would be too definite for us to say that he was captured but still we stand by our reporting. I wish we could have supported our news with video but we could not achieve this,” Şahin noted.

He also noted that he asked the Iranian state channel, Press TV, for a video showing Karayılan’s capture. The president of this institution reportedly told him that he will take care of his request. “This confirms the correctness of our news,” Şahin said.
Chaos in PKK

Military operations carried out by Turkey and Iran against the PKK and PEJAK, the Iranian branch of the PKK, also seem to have created a fight for leadership within the ranks of the PKK. The fact that none of the PKK leaders have denied the reports about Karayılan’s capture lends evidence for this internal power struggle.

Karayılan and Cemil Bayık, another senior PKK member, are known for their close ties with Iran. In case of their elimination from the PKK, there are fears that the terrorist organization might become marginalized and controlled by the more hawkish and pro-violence figures.

There are reports that the PKK is increasingly under the control of Murat Karasu, Ali Haydar Kaytan, Duran Kalkan and Syrian national Fehman Hüseyin. Experts say that the PKK may have difficulty in finding support from the Kurds in the event of these figures’ assuming leadership because Kaytan and Karasu are of Alevi origin while Kalkan is a hard line left-winger.

If the PKK is headed by these figures, it may carry out more bloody attacks but at the same time lose the public support in the process, experts say.
BDP confused

The political leadership of the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) seems to have been affected by the chaos within the PKK. BDP co-chairpersons Selahattin Demirtaş and Gülten Kışanak have called on the state to reveal the content of its talks with jailed PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan in a surprise development.

“We want the talks in İmralı [where Öcalan is jailed] to be carried out publicly,” Demirtaş, said recently. The number of PKK leaders who think that Öcalan cannot think clearly because he is under pressure rapidly rises.

Following Demirtaş’s call upon the government, Kışanak made a similar statement last week in a manifestation of the confusion within the ranks of the party. “The only thing the state has done so far in establishing a dialogue with Kurds has been to send a delegation of state officials to meet with Öcalan in İmralı. Who are the members of this delegation? Why do they hold such a meeting? Are there such meetings in reality? We have no knowledge of this. We want an explanation,” said Kışanak.




F-16s hit terrorists as Herons detect their activity

As the Turkish military continues its aerial strikes on the terrorist PKK, Heron unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which are used to detect terrorist activity, detected a group of terrorists on Friday night who were attempting to infiltrate Turkey. Carrying heavy weapons with mules, seven PKK terrorists gathered in a shack with nine other terrorists as their activity was being recorded minute by minute by UAVs.

Acting on intelligence provided by UAVs, F-16 warplanes attacked the coordinates as provided, killing 13 PKK terrorists. The warplanes opened fire on the areas where the three PKK terrorists might have taken shelter.

The UAVs, which Turkey has been using for three years, have proven highly effective in detecting the whereabouts of terrorists and in sending images and coordinates to the military to aid the units on the ground. Yet, the Turkish military has come under severe criticism for failing to benefit from UAVs in preventing terrorist attacks, which claimed the lives of dozens of soldiers over the past years.

It turned out that UAV which detected the terrorist activity on Friday night used the Aselsan-made Airborne Thermal Imaging Systems named “Aselflir.” The imaging system was mounted on 10 UAVs purchased from Israel.

There are currently 10 Heron UAVs in Turkey. Heron can monitor six different targets at the same time and collect intelligence for military operations. Turkey paid Israel $183 million for the purchase of 10 Herons.



21 August 2011, Sunday / ERCAN YAVUZ, ANKARA
 
320 is not enough, all of those cave rats must die.. so-called guerillas..
Well, a "thank you" is in order here to Israel for those Herons.
yes they were useful but no need a speacial thank
i never thanked the bakery guy for selling me breads.. he thanks me for buying his breads so he can make more breads for selling and his family with that money he earned.. by the way i began to make my own breads in-home ;)
 
kanlariniz bosuna akmayacak sehitlerimiz...!

"only" 300? isnt pkk like 5000 member group or something, where the F is the rest of them? hiding in deeper caves, those mountain gorillas. :sniper:
 
Wow i actually though we where bombing rocks and air there looks like we are bombing the **** out of them. Why didnt we do this before? If we continue this the Pkk will be wiped out in a mather of Months. :sniper:
 
I don't know if the body count is true to be honest. I wish they could confirm the body counts by names and such, or have MIT verify it. Another issue is the unconfirmed capture of Karayilan, so far he has failed to make an appearence, and TRT is maintaining that the news are true, and they're waiting for confirmation from irani tv station they request verify it.
 
The Turkish General Staff said on Tuesday that some 100 terrorists were killed and more than 80 were injured during air and artillery strikes against terrorist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) targets in northern Iraq in three consecutive raids last week.


The General Staff released a statement on its website detailing the military's anti-PKK offensives, which began on Wednesday night and continued for three consecutive nights. Noting that the operations were directed by the General Staff and conducted by the Air Forces Command's 2nd Air Force Command in Diyarbakır and the Land Forces Command's border bases, the statement said 132 targets were hit by sorties and 349 targets on the Kandil Mountains and in the Khakurk, Avaşin-Basyan and Zap regions were hit by heavy artillery during the strikes.

The statement underscored that the targets were chosen after detailed analyses confirmed several times that the targets were PKK bases and that the strikes were carried out only after it was confirmed that they were not residential areas. “Seventy-three hiding places, bomb shelters, 18 caves, 8 depots, 14 facilities, an ammunition store, 9 anti-craft stations and three control points were effectively destroyed. Although it is impossible to ascertain the number of terrorists killed, the initial information received shows that 90-100 terrorists were killed, more than 80 were injured and transferred to nearby hospitals and villages, many terrorists fled to nearby villages and used the locals as human shields,” the statement said.



According to the General Staff, the PKK does not let press and locals enter regions where operations were carried out, which it says is a move to gloss over the extent of actual damage and casualties in the area. Turkey has carried out several cross-border airstrikes and ground incursions to fight the PKK in Iraq over the last few years. But Wednesday's is the military's first offensive into northern Iraq since last summer, when Turkish planes carried out a series of similar retaliatory raids on PKK hideouts across the border.

PKK terrorists use the mountains of northern Iraq as a sanctuary from which to launch attacks on southeast Turkey. The raids, the first conducted by Turkey in the area since July 2010, were a response to a surge in PKK action in recent months and an ambush last Wednesday that killed eight soldiers and a village guard in the Çukurca district of Hakkari.



Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said in the face of the attack that Turkey had lost patience with terrorists fighting in southeastern Turkey. The General Staff said five terrorists who are among those who staged the Çukurca attack were killed on Friday in an airstrike carried out based on a spot intelligence report inside the country. The Turkish military said the activities of the PKK separatist organization will be monitored and it vowed to continue aerial and land attacks against the PKK.
 
I think this is a message to the world to showcase that even if all the old generals of the Turkish army are now in jail that does not mean that the Turkish army is not effective. :yahoo:

I really hope the ANKA is serviceable already Turkey needs to stop supporting the Israeli defense Industry.
 
I think this is a message to the world to showcase that even if all the old generals of the Turkish army are now in jail that does not mean that the Turkish army is not effective. :yahoo:

I really hope the ANKA is serviceable already Turkey needs to stop supporting the Israeli defense Industry.

And which Turkish Generals are in Jail ?
 
um... those are just names of the "cases" :) so far none of them have been sentenced to prison, they are detained/detention perhaps that's what Mosamania means
 
osamania was talkin about ergenkon and balyoz arrests..it is such a cheap propaganda when some people say that there are no officers to fight pkk because of those trials and that we lose the fight against it.
 

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