Turkey's military "neutralizes" three PKK fighters in Iraq's Kurdistan

Shafaq News/ Turkey's defense ministry on Thursday said it has "neutralized" five fighters affiliated with the anti-Ankara Kurdistan's Workers Party (PKK) in an airstrike near Erbil, the capital city of Iraq's Semi-autonomous Kurdistan region.

Turkish authorities use the term "neutralize" to imply that "the terrorists in question surrendered, were killed, or captured."

The Turkish Armed Forces have been conducting cross-border military operations against the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in Northern Iraq since the 1980s.

In July 2015, a two-and-a-half year long ceasefire broke down, and the conflict between Ankara and militants of the PKK – recognised as a terrorist organisation by Turkey, 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 2015-2017 the violence devastated communities in some urban centers of Turkey's majority-Kurdish south east and – at times – struck into the heart of the country's largest metropolitan centers. From 2017 onward, the fighting moved into rural areas of Turkey's south east.

As the Turkish military pushed more militants out of Turkey, by 2019 the conflict's concentration shifted to northern Iraq and northern Syria.