BAGHDAD: Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan called for combined regional efforts to combat outlawed Kurdish fighters in Iraq and neighboring Syria during a visit to Baghdad on Sunday.
The Kurdistan Workers’ Party, also known as PKK, which has fought a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state, holds positions in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region, which also hosts Turkish military bases.
The PKK is listed as a terrorist organization by Turkiye and its Western allies, and Ankara accuses Kurdish forces in Syria of links to the outlawed group.
“I want to emphasize this fact in the strongest way: The PKK is targeting Turkiye, Iraq and Syria,” Fidan said in a press conference with his Iraqi counterpart Fuad Hussein.
“We must combine all our resources and destroy both Daesh and the PKK,” he added.
Fidan’s visit comes after two Iraqi border guards were killed Friday near the Turkish border in a shooting that Baghdad blamed on the PKK. After the attack, Ankara vowed to work with Iraq to secure their common frontier.
Turkiye regularly launches strikes against the PKK in Iraq and Kurdish fighters in Syria.
Baghdad has recently sharpened its tone against the PKK, and last year it quietly listed the group as a “banned organization” — though Ankara demands the Iraqi government do more in the fight against the militant group.
“Our ultimate expectation from Iraq is that it recognizes the PKK, which it has declared a banned organization, as a terrorist organization as well,” Fidan said.
In August, Baghdad and Ankara signed a military cooperation deal to establish joint command and training centers with the aim of fighting the PKK.
The foreign ministers also discussed the fight against Daesh on the Iraqi-Syrian border, Hussein said during the press conference, as well as the situation in Syria, where former leader Bashar Assad was toppled in December.
“There are clear understandings between ... Turkiye and Iraq on how to address” the situation there, he said, adding that Baghdad was in contact with the new Syrian authorities and was “trying to coordinate on many issues.”
Earlier this month, Fidan threatened to launch a military operation against Kurdish forces in Syria, where Turkiye has carried out successive ground operations to push the fighters away from its border.
The Kurdish forces there are seen by the West as essential in the fight against Daesh.
