The Turkish government on Wednesday put the number of suspected members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the People’s Protection Units (YPG) «neutralized» in the new bombing campaign launched on Monday against targets in northern Iraq and Syria at more than 250.
Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said that 254 alleged PKK and YPG members have been «neutralized» in these attacks, which have hit 471 «targets» in Iraq and Syria, as reported by the Turkish state news agency Anatolia.
Turkish authorities use the term «neutralized» to refer to suspects having been killed, captured or surrendered to authorities. In the case of bombings, it implies that Ankara considers them dead.
«Terrorists despicably attacked civilian targets. We will silence them as soon as possible,» he said, before stressing that Ankara only targets «terrorists.» «We have no problems with any ethnic, religious or sectarian group or with Kurdish or Arab brothers,» he has maintained.
However, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) on Tuesday rejected the Turkish government’s claims about its casualties in the recent bombings and indicated that only one of its members has been killed. Thus, the Media and Information Department of the SDF — whose main member is the YPG — has pointed out through its account on the social network Twitter that the figures provided by Akar «are not correct».
«As a result of the latest attacks (by Turkey) one of our fighters, two members of the security forces and eleven civilians have embraced martyrdom,» he said, after Ankara unleashed the aforementioned bombing campaign on Monday.
The operation, dubbed ‘Sword Claw’, was launched following the Nov. 13 bombing in Istanbul that left six dead and which Turkey blames on the PKK. However, both the group and the SDF have disassociated themselves from what happened and have expressed their condolences to the victims.
