Turkey's governors denied 282 of 290 army requests for anti-terrorism operations in 2014

Uğur Ergan - ANKARA

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The Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) filed 290 requests for permits to conduct anti-terror operations in three Turkish provinces with the corresponding governor’s offices in 2014, with only eight of them receiving a positive response, daily Hürriyet has reported.

In 2014 only, the TSK filed 110 requests for permits with the governor’s office in the southeastern province of Şırnak to conduct anti-terror operations in the province, which has seen an upsurge in violence with a spate of terrorism acts over the past several months. However, it only received three permits to hold military operations.   

The TSK filed nearly 100 requests for permits with the governor’s office in the southeastern province of Hakkari to hold anti-terror operations in the city, though only three of them were responded to positively. 

To conduct anti-terror operations in the eastern province of Tunceli, the TSK filed around 80 requests with the Tunceli Governor’s Office, but only two of them received a positive response.

Operations conducted with permits the TSK received did not pose a major blow to terrorist organizations, military sources said, adding the administration could have found this convenient.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan previously acknowledged the administration had instructed governors to not carry out military operations targeting outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants during the now-stalled resolution process for the Kurdish issue.

“Of course, along the resolution process, our governors were not seriously getting engaged in current operations against these terrorist organizations in line with our instructions,” Erdoğan told the state-run Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT) on Sept. 16.