Turkey’s campaign against Kurdish militants almost completed: PM

PanARMENIAN.Net - A Turkish security force campaign against Kurdish militants in the southeast has been largely completed, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu was reported as saying on Tuesday, January 19, as he outlined plans to maintain tighter control in parts of the region, Reuters reports.

Turkish police and military launched major operations against Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) fighters in several towns across the mainly Kurdish region last month, intensifying a conflict reignited by the collapse of a ceasefire in July.

The army says it killed more than 500 PKK rebels in the campaign, adding to a death toll of more than 40,000 people killed since the PKK took up arms in 1984. The pro-Kurdish HDP party says some 100 civilians have been killed in the fighting.

"The process is to a large extent completed," Davutoglu was reported as telling reporters on his plane traveling to London, disclosing plans for a new security structure and reorganization of state administration in two border provinces.

"It won't be like with old operations, withdrawing after streets are cleansed. There will be a more orderly security presence," the Yeni Safak daily quoted him as saying. "The goal is to build a public order...in which no illegal structure can take control of any streets," he said.

For much of the 31-year insurgency, conflict has focused the countryside, but the latest violence has been in urban areas.

The army says that during the campaign it has removed trenches and barricades set up by PKK youth wing members to keep security forces out. Thousands of locals have left the towns hit by conflict, many complaining of indiscriminate operations.

Davutoglu's comments were published after the governor of Sirnak province said a round-the-clock curfew in the town of Silopi, near the Iraqi border, would only be enforced between 6 p.m. and 5 a.m. from Tuesday.