Turkey launches an air offensive on a residential complex in northern Iraq

On Saturday, a Turkish Air Force plane bombed a residential complex in Duhok Governorate, northern Iraq.

"A Turkish plane bombed the Bakirah residential complex," Mushir Muhammad, director of the Zawiya district in northern Duhok governorate, said in a statement distributed to local media, according to Al-Ain News. Mushir Muhammad explained that the attack was directed against a car, although it did not hit the car. "The passengers in the targeted car fled after being bombed," he added.

The offensive comes a day after a Turkish plane carried out two air strikes over a valley located 50 kilometers from the city of Duhok, located in the governorate of the same name, killing one person and injuring several. 

Ankara has intensified attacks on border areas in Iraq's Kurdistan region, and has been conducting ground incursions since mid-June, leaving casualties and material losses. The country presided by Recep Tayyip Erdogan justifies its military interventions on Iraqi territory by the persecution it carries out against members of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), described as terrorist by the Turkish country and accused of carrying out terrorist attacks in the south of Ottoman territory. The Turkish army makes frequent land and area incursions into Iraq to attack PKK bases in the Middle Eastern country. Precisely, the Kurdish organization is catalogued as a terrorist organization not only by Turkey but also by the United States and the European Union (EU).

Faced with this situation, the Iraqi government recently presented an official protest to the Turkish ambassador in Baghdad, Fatih Yildiz, asking Ankara to respect its borders and not to interfere with the sovereignty of neighbouring countries.

On the other hand, Turkey claimed to have killed six Kurdish guerrillas of the PKK in another attack in northern Iraq, as announced by the Ottoman Ministry of Defence itself. 

The attack, coordinated with the intelligence services, took place in the region of Gara, in the north of Iraqi territory, according to Defense on the social network Twitter without specifying exactly when it took place. 

Meanwhile, in mid-June, Turkey launched an extensive air and ground military operation in which it attacked dozens of targets of the PKK, which is supported by some Kurdish factions in Iraq, but not by the authorities of the autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan. 

The Iraqi executive has protested several times against these attacks and has denounced that they have caused the death of civilians. Meanwhile, Turkey has continued to carry out ground and air operations inside Iraqi territory for years without concern for what the international community may think, which largely condemns these offensives. 

At the same time, the Ottoman nation maintains a belligerent position also in other scenarios, such as Syria and Libya, countries in which it also interferes in internal state affairs; all of this is aimed at improving its geostrategic position in the Middle East and in the Mediterranean and at benefiting from important gas and oil resources in the area. 

Thus, the Eurasian nation has been taking part in the Libyan and Syrian civil wars for months, including through the provision of paid mercenaries attached to groups linked in the past to jihadist terrorist organisations such as Daesh and Al-Qaeda, as various media have pointed out. 

This is at the international level. At the domestic level, there has also been much talk of the Turkish State's judicial and police persecution of elements linked to the Kurdish sphere; such as members of the People's Democratic Party (HDP, for its centuries in Turkish), some of whom have been arbitrarily arrested on charges of collaborating with the PKK guerrillas. 

Along these lines, the Erdogan regime has also arrested and tried hundreds of members of the army, in an alleged purge aimed at eliminating opposition elements, on the accusation of having collaborated with those responsible for the 2016 coup d'état and with the group linked to the opposition cleric Fethullah Gülen.