Turkey, Iran attack northern Iraq’s Kurds

Rubeir al-Fares

Turkey is teaming up with Iran by staging joint attacks against the positions of the Kurdistan Workers Party, widely known as PKK, in northern Iraq.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has ordered the deployment of special combat troops in northern Iraq, within a ground operation against the party.

The Turkish air force and infantry are providing the ground troops with an air cover.

The Turkish air force has staged strikes against PKK positions in the northern Iraqi towns of Sinjar and Makhmur.

The PKK has been battling Ankara for decades. Ankara says the two towns have become strongholds of the Kurdish group.

Turkish shelling of the mountains along the border with Iraq has become a common occurrence since the termination of the peace agreement between the PKK and Turkey in 2015.

Cooperation between Iran and Turkey in the war on the PKK came shortly after Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif visited Turkey.

Zarif was in Turkey to coordinate the war against the PKK. This war also came a short time after Iran executed renowned Kurdish political prisoner Hedayat Abdollahpour. Iranian authorities executed Abdollahpour, even without notifying his family.

He was put in jail in the winter of 2017 and accused of having links with banned Kurdish opposition parties. Abdollahpour was then sentenced to death.

Different Kurdish villages in northern Iraq were shelled in the past few days, according to local sources.

Iranian airplanes flew over the villages before the same villages were shelled by the Iranian infantry.

The sources said the areas shelled were gathering places for shepherds from different parts of northern Iraq. Local authorities have not assessed the extent of the damage from the Iranian shelling and the Turkish attacks yet.