Skip to main content
Turkish army humiliated by PKK in Iraqi Kurdistan as it is forced to retreat with ‘the blood of its own people on its hands’
The PKK's flag

TURKEY’s military operation against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Iraqi Kurdistan has ended in humiliation, with forces retreating on Sunday after air strikes killed 13 Turkish soldiers.

The HPG, the military wing of the PKK, said that Operation Claw Eagle 2 had failed and that Turkey, which has Nato’s second-largest army, had been forced to leave with the blood of its own people on its hands.

“The attempted invasion of the Turkish occupation army in the Gare region has met the effective resistance of our forces and failed from the first moment,” an HPG statement said.

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
Similar stories
SECRET STATE: The statue of David Stirling, founder of the SAS, looks over mist around Ben Ledi mountain, Central Scotland
Features / 29 January 2026
29 January 2026

As the government quietly upgrades the role of Britain’s special forces, their growing global footprint and near-total exemption from democratic oversight should alarm us all, says ROGER McKENZIE

ETHNIC STRIFE: Women condemn, yesterday, a video in circulation that allegedly shows a fighter affiliated with the Syrian government holding the braid of a Kurdish female fighter after killing her, in Qamishli, northeastern Syria
Middle East / 23 January 2026
23 January 2026

VIJAY PRASHAD details how US support for Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa allowed him to break the resistance of the autonomous Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)

Prime Minister Keir Starmer speaks to soldiers at the RAF base in Akrotiri, Cyprus, during his three-day trip to the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Cyprus, December 10, 2024
Features / 3 July 2025
3 July 2025

From nuclear bomb storage in the 1950s to surveillance flights over Gaza today, the Cyprus base has enabled seven decades of machinations so heinous that Starmer once blurted out ‘we can’t tell the world’ what goes on there, writes NUVPREET KALRA