Minister enters the New Year in Hakkari

ISTANBUL - Doğan News Agency

İdris Naim Şahin also visits border troops during his trip to Hakkari. DHA photo

Turkey’s Interior Minister İdris Naim Şahin paid a visit to a military outpost on the Turkish-Iraqi border Dec. 31, ringing in the New Year in the southeastern province of Hakkari.

“Counterterrorism will pertinaciously continue nonstop in 2013,” Şahin said during a breakfast with soldiers at the outpost and praised the Turkish Armed Forces’ fight against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

“This struggle against terrorism is not limited to terrorists bearing arms. Our state and nation’s goal is to continue the struggle in psychological, sociological, economic and political ways,” Şahin said. His second destination was the Zap Gendarmerie Station on the Hakkari Van land route.

Şahin’s visit was held under high security precautions. Some local shopkeepers protested Şahin by not working during his visit.

Meanwhile, the Turkish Armed Forces killed 46 PKK militants in Northern Iraq in an air raid conducted Dec. 22, the daily Hürriyet reported yesterday.

Special gendarmerie forces also supported the raid over land against the Kani Rash camp located in Northern Iraq.

Some 12 female militants were among those killed, the report said, and 22 militants reportedly survived the raid.