Operations in Cizre, Sur to be completed within days, weeks: Gov't

ANKARA

AA photo

The Turkish government has estimated that ongoing military operations against militants of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the districts of Cizre in Şırnak and the district of Sur in Diyarbakır in Southeast Anatolia would be completed within days or weeks.

“We believe that it [the operation] will be completed in Cizre within a few days. In Sur, it may take one or two weeks but there too, 85-90 percent [of the operation] has been completed. In Cizre, the cleaning of ditches and holes and eliminating of mines has reached 99 percent,” Interior Minister Efkan Ala told reporters on Feb. 2.

Turkey has imposed successive curfews over the last months in towns in the southeast to back military operations aiming to crush the PKK. In addition to Cizre and Sur, the district of Silopi in Şırnak has been the scene of round-the-clock curfews and intense clashes between Turkish security forces and suspected PKK militants since mid-December 2015.