Turkish drone airstrike on PKK site in north Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan

Shafaq News/ A Turkish drone struck on Wednesday the Baradust area on the outskirts Erbil Governorate, where Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) members are deployed. A security source told Shafaq News Agency that "the attack targeted PKK sites within the villages of Lolan, Sunin, and Bir Barmakh within the boundaries of the Baradust area north of Erbil." He did not provide details about the size of the damage and casualties. On Thursday, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan is scheduled to visit Iraq to prepare for the upcoming visit of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan by the end of March. The visit would discuss the security file, including PKK's presence in the region. In July 2015, a two-and-a-half year-long ceasefire broke down, and the conflict between Ankara and militants of the PKK – recognized as a terrorist organization by Turkiye, the U.S., and the European Union – entered one of its deadliest chapters in nearly four decades. Since that date, the conflict has progressed through several phases. Between roughly 2015 and 2017, the violence devastated communities in some urban centers of Turkiye's majority Kurdish southeast and – at times – struck into the heart of the country's largest metropolitan centers. From 2017 onward, the fighting moved into rural areas of Turkiye's southeast. As the Turkish military pushed more militants out of Turkiye, by 2019, the conflict's concentration shifted to northern Iraq and northern Syria, where the Turkish army has established several military bases at strategic points in the Matin mountain range, citing the expulsion of Kurdistan Workers' Party militants as justification. In a TV interview last February, the President of Kurdistan Region, Nechirvan Barzani, was asked if Turkiye coordinates with Erbil when launching strikes against PKK in the region; Barzani explained, "The (Kurdistan) Workers' Party is a severe headache for the Kurdistan Region and Iraq as well. They do not value the legitimacy of the Kurdistan Region's institutions and threaten Turkiye from our territories. While we completely reject the principle of turning the lands of the Kurdistan Region into a source of threat to our neighbors, whether this neighbor is Turkiye or Iran." He rejected that PKK, as opponents of Tehran and Ankara, "make the Kurdistan Region a safe area to create problems for these countries. It is very unfortunate that the PKK plays a very negative role in this context and uses the mountainous areas of the Kurdistan Region and tries to create problems for Turkiye. This is absolutely unacceptable from our side." On many occasions, Ankara urged the Iraqi government to label the PKK a "terrorist" organization. On the other hand, Baghdad frequently called for an end to the presence of Turkish military forces on its land, demanding that Turkiye stop its attacks and respect Iraq's sovereignty.