The National Intelligence Organization (MIT) has eliminated a so-called commander of the PKK terrorist group’s Syrian wing YPG in a precision strike in northern Syria’s Qamishli region, security sources said Thursday.
Metin Dinç, code-named “Dijwar Tekoşin,” was arrested in Türkiye on charges of “being a member of an armed terrorist organization, spreading terrorist propaganda, providing arms to armed terrorist organizations and organizing protests” between 2008 and 2015.
In 2015, he illegally crossed over to Syria to join the PKK/YPG and went on to organize attacks against Turkish security forces, security sources said.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights too confirmed the PKK/YPG terrorist’s death on Tuesday.
The Britain-based Observatory said the terrorist, serving in the Asayish security forces, an ally to the YPG, had played “a prominent role in leading the operations against the Daesh group in Raqqa province,” a former bastion of the terrorists in Syria.
Asayish claimed in a statement one of its “leadership comrades” was killed in Qamishli after a Turkish army drone targeted one of its vehicles at a detention center in Umm Fursan.
The PKK/YPG has exploited the power vacuum during the Syrian civil war to occupy swathes of oil and gas-rich land and create a self-styled entity in northeastern Syria. The terrorist group has also found a major ally in the U.S. against Daesh and justifies its presence as a frontier against remnants of Daesh.
Türkiye continues to stress that the YPG is an arm of the PKK, which has been responsible for the deaths of more than 40,000 people, including women, children, infants and the elderly, in its 40-year-long terror campaign.
The Turkish intelligence and army, which has troops in northern Syria, regularly carries out strikes in PKK/YPG-held areas.
Türkiye controls two large strips of territory along the border after expelling PKK/YPG forces in successive campaigns. Ankara says it aims to create a security strip along its Syrian and Iraqi borders and sever the ties between the YPG and PKK strongholds in northern Iraq’s Qandil region.
Defense Minister Yaşar Güler has said an ongoing operation launched in northern Iraq in April 2022 would be finalized before the winter. Turkish airstrikes have ramped up in the region since.
Similarly, on Wednesday, media outlets reported a Turkish operation in Iraq that killed three terrorists, but Turkish authorities have yet to officially confirm the reports.
A drone bombed a car on the Dokhan-Khalakan road, Agence-Frace Presse (AFP) said, citing a Dokan district governor in a region controlled by Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).
The federal government in Baghdad outlawed the PKK as a banned organization in March, and last month agreed to a military cooperation deal with Ankara that will see joint training and command centers set up in the fight against the terrorists.
Türkiye also wants Iraq to fully recognize the PKK as a terrorist group.
