Erdogan threatens to attack refugee camp in Iraq

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has made some harsh remarks during an appearance on Turkish state broadcaster TRT. Erdogan has warned Iraq that Turkey will "clean out" a refugee camp that he says provides safe haven for Kurdish PKK militants, threatening to take its long-running military campaign deep into Iraqi territory.

The Turkish president has already issued warnings of this kind on multiple occasions, as Turkish forces have intensified attacks on Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) bases in northern Iraq over the past year, focusing their raids mainly on a strip of territory up to 30 kilometres deep inside Iraq.

In his latest remarks, Erdogan has targeted a refugee camp in Iraqi Kurdistan as "a breeding ground for PKK rebels". The Turkish president has claimed that Makhmour, which lies 180km south of the Turkish border, poses as serious a threat as the PKK stronghold in the Qandil Mountains further north. 

"How long must we be patient," Erdogan said. As reported by Reuters news agency, a senior Iraqi official said Turkey complained to Baghdad last week about "terrorist activities launched by the PKK from its camp in Makhmour against Turkey". "If the United Nations does not clean it up, we will do it ourselves as members of the UN," the Turkish president has threatened.

The Makhmour camp was established in the 1990s, when thousands of Kurds from Turkey crossed the border in a move that Ankara says was deliberately provoked by the PKK. The refugee camp has already been the target of several Turkish air strikes a year ago. A senior Turkish official told Reuters that "the Makhmour camp is being used as one of the logistical centres in attacks against Turkey or the Turkish Armed Forces".

Turkish journalist Arzu Yildiz, as reported by Al-Monitor, explains that this new strategy against the PKK is a manoeuvre by Erdogan to divert attention from the country's economic problems. "From the past to the present, these operations have been used to ward off enemies, to divert attention from Turkey's real problems and to mobilise nationalist and religious sentiments for this purpose," Yildiz points out.

The country's economic situation is completely unstable. The Turkish lira has hit a new all-time low and Turkish President Erdogan's continued meddling in the hierarchy of the Central Bank has hit the country's economy hard. The lira has lost 16% of its value since March, when Erdogan sacked the then head of the central bank, Naci Agbal, the fourth head of the institution in two years. This new fall has set off alarm bells in a country facing a severe economic crisis.

Unemployment stands at 13.1 per cent, and the rate among the country's youth is close to double. However, the main problem facing Erdogan's government is inflation, which rose by 17.3 per cent year-on-year in May compared to 17.1 per cent the previous month. So a new offensive against the PKK without clear signs of being a real threat seems crazy, especially given the situation in the Eurasian country.

Hishyar Ozsoy, a lawmaker from the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party, stressed that "instead of resolving the Kurdish issue through dialogue, [the Turkish government] is determined to persist in its militaristic policy, attacking everywhere, including civilian settlements and refugee camps". Furthermore, Ozsoy adds that "instead of bombing Makhmour, the government should answer the question why Makhmour was established to begin with and why tens of thousands of Kurdish citizens of Turkey are living in a refugee camp in Iraq".