TURKEY aims to occupy the whole of Iraqi Kurdistan, Kurdish officials warned today, as the world remains largely silent on the Nato member state’s latest illegal military operation.

“Turkey is trying to empty Kurdistan of the Kurds,” Democratic Left Party in Syria general secretary Saleh Kedo told the ANHA news agency.

He accused Ankara of using the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) as an excuse to destroy Kurdish villages and occupy the Iraq-Turkey border in a bid to place pressure on the Kurdistan Regional Government, which he urged to “stand up to these arbitrary attacks.”