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ANKARA: Turkey and Iraq’s central government in Baghdad will carry out a joint operation against Kurdish militants in northern Iraq, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu was quoted as saying on Thursday.
Cavusoglu’s comments came as Turkey pushed ahead with a cross-border military operation against the Kurdish YPG militia in northern Syria’s Afrin region.
Speaking to reporters on his flight from Germany to Austria, Cavusoglu said the Afrin operation, launched on Jan. 20, will be completed by May, according to broadcaster CNN Turk.
Cavusoglu was quoted as saying the joint cross-border operation with Iraq may start after Iraq holds parliamentary elections scheduled for May 2018, signaling Turkish troops may move to northern Iraq following the ongoing offensive.
The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged an insurgency in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeast since the 1980s, has camps in the Qandil mountains of northern Iraq, from which it frequently carries out attacks into Turkey.
The PKK is viewed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union. Ankara considers the YPG to be a Syrian extension of the PKK.
Turkey's state-run news agency said, meanwhile, that Turkish troops and allied Syrian opposition forces had entered the town of Jinderes, in the enclave's southwest, where they were engaged in street clashes with Syrian Kurdish forces. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that a siege of Afrin's main city would begin after Jinderes is taken.