Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya announced on Wednesday that a total of 240 suspects were apprehended in two weeks of “Operation Mace-39” and “Operation Mace-40” across Türkiye against the PKK/KCK terrorist group. The PKK has been responsible for the killings of thousands of people since the 1980s in its brutal campaign of violence. The KCK is a so-called political umbrella group that includes the PKK’s wings in Iran, Syria and Iraq.
The minister said police and gendarmerie forces have been conducting operations against the terrorist group in 43 provinces, including the capital Ankara, Istanbul and Izmir. Captured suspects included members of the group’s “youth” wing, financiers and those behind pro-PKK propaganda on social media. Some of the suspects already had arrest warrants. During the operations, security forces captured a large number of illegally possessed arms and PKK propaganda material.
Strikes and operations against the terrorist group intensified after a PKK attack on the Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) in Ankara that killed five and injured 22 people in October.
The PKK took up arms against the Turkish state in 1984 to achieve a so-called Kurdish self-rule in southeastern regions and is designated a terrorist organization by Ankara, as well as the United States and the European Union.
PKK violence was initially raging in rural regions of southeastern Türkiye, but the terrorists have moved a large chunk of operations to northern Iraq since 2019 after successive Turkish operations, but the group still has operatives within the country.