The Turkish government imposed an indefinite curfew on at least 116 villages and hamlets in Diyarbakır province on Wednesday citing an imminent military offensive against the militants of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
According to a report by Kurdistan 24, the Ankara-appointed governor’s office in Diyarbakır said in a press release that the operation zone covered an area falling in the northern districts of Lice, Hazro, Kulp, Silvan, and Kocaköy, a region several thousand kilometers-square large. People were told to stay indoors at all times indefinitely until a second order.
The mountainous terrain on the provincial borders of Bingol historically serves PKK militants as a sanctuary. Since the 2015 collapse of a ceasefire and peace talks between Turkish government led by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the PKK, the Turkish army has scores of times conducted large-scale operations to bring the mountains under its full control.
Apart from Diyarbakır, all of the Kurdish provinces namely Mardin, Hakkari, Batman, Şırnak, Van, Ağrı, and Dersim continue to be highly militarized and deadly clashes occasionally flare up.
Several thousand people, mostly PKK militants, and civilians, along with Turkish soldiers, have been killed in the renewed phase of the decades-long conflict, also initially fought in dozens of urban population centers for months.
Erdoğan government has opted for the most aggressive military policy the country has taken in decades, taking the clash beyond its border. Turkish military leads an intense air campaign with warplanes and armed drones on perceived PKK camps and targets in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Airstrikes there have killed dozens of civilians over the past three years.
In Syria, where the US-backed Kurdish forces are battling the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), Turkish military currently occupies a vast territory spanning from the west of the River Euphrates to Afrin in Syria’s northwest to prevent any Kurdish autonomy there.
The post Turkish gov’t imposes indefinite curfew in over 110 Kurdish villages appeared first on Stockholm Center for Freedom.
from Stockholm Center for Freedom https://stockholmcf.org/turkish-govt-imposes-indefinite-curfew-in-over-110-kurdish-villages/
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