Abdulla Hawez, a Kurdish analyst who writes exclusively on Kurdish issue, made an important point on his Twitter account that has received less attention. The Kurdish analyst writes, “Since 2020, the number of PKK casualties in the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has been higher than in Turkey itself since the beginning of the armed uprising in 1984. The change in the course of the conflict from Turkey to the KRG has changed since 2018 when it started gradually. “
This shows that the PKK is gradually being cleared inside Turkey, and its presence in Turkey has been weakened, as well as its maneuvering power and operations, even in remote villages. Selahettin Chelik, one of the founding members of the PKK who fled and left because of criticism of Ocalan, had previously stated in an interview with the Kurdish media that the PKK could not even enter the Kurdish villages of Turkey and had suffered a major defeat.
On the other hand, the increase in PKK casualties in the Kurdistan Region is the result of the close and very extensive cooperation of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) led by Massoud Barzani with Turkey, the Turkish army, with the intelligence cooperation of the KDP leading to more members and headquarters of the PKK to be targeted inside the KRG, and over the past two years, a large number of PKK members have been killed. Among the killed members, some were of the leadership council. “The cooperation between the KDP and Turkey is so that Turkey has set up 50 barracks and checkpoints inside the region.”
The differences between Barzani and Ocalan date back to the 1980s, when the two sides killed mutually several thousand members.
