Turkish security forces have eliminated five members of the PKK terrorist group, including one in the most wanted red category, in eastern Türkiye, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya announced Thursday, according to Daily Sabah.
“Five terrorists were eliminated in the rural areas of the Doğubayazıt district in Ağrı province and Palamut village in the Hasankeyf district of Batman province,” Yerlikaya said on X.
One of the five eliminated in the operations was a terrorist named Yılmaz Öner, Yerlikaya noted.
Öner, also known by his code name “Şehmus Malazgirt,” was wanted in the red category of the Interior Ministry’s color-coded list. The list is divided into five categories, with red as the most wanted, followed by blue, green, orange and gray.
Three other terrorists were wanted in the orange category.
Yerlikaya said Öner had played a role in a total of 18 terrorist attacks that claimed the lives of 27 security personnel and four civilians and injured 68 security personnel and two civilians.
It was also determined that Öner gave the order for those terrorist attacks to take place, he added.
Ağrı and Batman, along with other eastern cities like Şırnak, Tunceli, Diyarbakır and Hakkari, were once synonymous with acts of terrorism where the PKK concentrated its attacks since its inception in the 1980s.
With no shelter in urban locations, the PKK takes advantage of mountainous territories in Türkiye’s southeast, where its members spend winter in remote caves. Turkish security forces regularly target PKK hideouts in these regions.