Speaking to military academy graduates on Saturday, Erdogan hailed Operation Claw-Lock, which Ankara launched in April 2022, as a success. He said the PKK elements were now “incapable of acting inside our borders.”
“We will close the lock very soon in the Claw Operation Zone in northern Iraq,” Erdogan said, according to the Reuters news agency.
According to Al Jazeera, the Turkish president did not give a timeline for the end of the operation and it was not immediately clear what it would mean for the situation on the ground in northern Iraq and Syria, where Ankara has increased air raids in recent months.
Turkish forces have been sporadically fighting the PKK in northern Iraq for decades.
The Iraqi government has considered the Turkish army's presence in north of the country in the Kurdistan region as illegitimate and in violation of its territorial integrity, and has called on the neighboring country to pull out all its troops.
Local Kurdish people northern Iraq have been forced to evacuate their villages due to the Turkish operations.
MNA
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