During its Kemalist period, Turkey preferred to cultivate a cautious approach leading it to rarely implicate itself in world affairs, especially in external operations. However, in the last 15 years, Turkey has grown into an enterprising regional interventionist power. This activism first took a diplomatic form with a policy of “zero problems with our neighbours” proned by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ex-minister of Foreign Affairs, Ahmet Davutoğlu. Nonetheless, in the last five years, a series of military implications in Syria, Libya and in the Caucus have jeopardised this idealist strategic positioning. These operations have been heavily commented and mediatised, particularly those conducted in Syria that led to Turkey cementing its influence in the north of the country, one both sides of the Euphrates. Yet, we often forget that next to these operations, in the last three years, the Turkish army seems to be progressively cementing its presence within the territory of its Iraqi neighbour. 

Operation “Claw”, the turning point of the operations

Since May 2019, the Turkish army launched a series of military operations against the PKK in Northern Iraq, called Pençe Hareketi (Operation Claw). Beyond airstrikes, these missions also utilise helicopters, drones, artillery pieces and special forces on the ground. Conceptualised at the start as punctual and completed in June 2020, the first mission (Pençe) sparked many others with similar names and ways of conducting the missions using varying justifications. Thus, between June and September 2020,  the start of operation Pençe Kartal (Eagle’s claw) could be witnessed which consisted of airstrikes conducted by aircrafts and drones against the positions of the PKK in mount Sinjar and Pençe Kaplan (tiger’s claw), indicating the ground operations conducted in Haftanin (Zakho District, province of Dohuk) against the positions of Kurdish guerilla forces. In April 2021, the Turkish army established the operations Pençe Şimşek (lighting claw) and Pençe Yıldırım (thunder claw), along the Iraq-Turkey border (more precisely in the vicinity of Metina, Zap and Avashin-Basyan). Operations that are still ongoing with, since Feburary 2022, operation Kış Kartal (Winter Eagle). If all these initiatives have been lightly commented, it is probably because this isn’t the first time Turkey has attempted this.

Since the Iraqi state came out of the Gulf War weakened, the Turkish army has often attacked the positions of the PKK in geographically and temporally limited cross-border incursions: Kuzey Iraq (Northern Iraq) in 1992, Çelik (steel) in 1995, Çekiç (Hammer) during the spring of 1997, Şafak (Horizon) during the autumn of 1997, Güneş (Sun) in 2008. To justify these border incursions, Ankara invoked on one hand, the 1926 Anglo-Iraqi-Turkish treaty that gives Turkey the right of inspection on its borders to neutralise potential hostile enterprises. On the other hand, the “right of hot pursuit” with a depth of 5 km that had been granted by Saddam Hussein in the 1980s. During these three last decades, this situation had generated a sort of permanent Turkish nibbling of Iraq’s territory, which had been facilitated by the country’s dislocation in theory and dismemberment in practice. Yet, it is possible that the Pençe operations represent a new step aiming to reinforce Turkish military installations in northern Iraq, thus opening the possibility to new military interventions of a larger scale. This objective will nevertheless, not be easy to reach.

Preventing the PKK’s internal flux between Iraq and Syria

In reality, the main goal of this series of Pençe operations since 2019 is to thwart the internal circulation of PKK forces from their main rear bases established in mount Qandil in the extreme north-east of Iraq up to the Syrian-Iraq border on mount Sinjar. It is there that the Kurdish guerilla fighters have their positions, seized after their victories against ISIS.  The threat for Turkey is that such a circulation brings the Turkish Iraqi border to transform into a Turkish-Kurdish border, or more precisely a border with the PKK. In that regard, the main reason for these Turkish interventions in Iraq is similar to that of the military operations Ankara conducts against the PYD-YPG, the Syrian branch of the PKK in northern Syria on the west bank of the Euphrates in Jarablus, Afrin or in Rojava. For Turkey, the aim is to protect its borders from the PKK’s presence. This is as much of a priority for the government as its opposition, illustrated in the last few years by “Hudut Namuştur” (the border is our honour). The offensive in Syria allowed Turkey to establish its zones of influence, yet they rely on complex implications. This process required the United States and Russian Federation from abstaining from intervening, both of them entertaining relations with the PYD-YPG. In addition, in a territory that remains officially Syrian, the Turkish government finds itself in opposition to Bachar al-Assad, with whom Ankara has broken off relations since 2011.

Towards the establishment of a Turkish zone in northern Iraq?

In northern Iraq, the situation is as complex but remains distinct. The first difference is the existence of an autonomous Kurdish regional government (KRG), recognised by the Iraqi federal constitution in 2005. The second is that Turkey is not in conflict with the Iraqi government compared to the Syrian regime. If it is in Erbil and Baghdad like Ankara’s interests to prevent the expansion of the PKK’s influence in northern Iraq, the two Iraqi instances also worry that the Turkish military presence in this sector will drag on.

For political and economic reasons, the KRG has favourable relations with Turkey and these could be witnessed in the last few months, just like the hostility between the KRG and the PKK in northern Iraq and on mount Sinjar, leading in some instance to armed confrontations. Yet, the Iraqi Kurds remain divided and cautious of Turkey’s installation in the region. With regards to the Iraqi state, it remains barely active on the field, especially when it comes to protecting the integrity of its borders. On the contrary, the Shia militias (Hachd al-Chaabi also called the Popular mobilisation forces) are, after having participated in the clashes against Daesh to take back Mosul in 2017. Quite notably, they did not hesitate to repeatedly attack the Turkish positions in northern Iraq and this trend could increase.

In this “no man’s land” along the border, where its presence is poorly tolerated, Turkey through its Pençe operations seems to have chosen to clutch on to their ground by setting up a succession of support points (forty or so according to the Turkish army) that interrupt the PKK’s points of passage. Creating vast zones of influence like in Syria -beyond the large-scale operations this would require – risk to quickly evolve into a perilous space when civilians and a plethora of actors are hard to distinguish. This can be illustrated in February 2021 during a rushed Turkish intervention against the PKK in the Gara sector to liberate 13 hostages which ended with their execution. This seems to have dissuaded Ankara to penetrate too far into the Iraqi territory and risk setting itself up. If Turkey wishes to continue its large-scale operations in the Sinjar, it is hard to see how they could launch such an operation without the consent of the US and particularly in some areas, without irritating Iran. Despite the matters that have brought Teheran and Ankara closer together in the last few years, the Iranians have not hesitated to systematically criticise Turkey’s implantation strategy in northern Iraq and Syria. Bearing in mind this strategic information, it is likely that Turkey will have to make do with this “discreet war” it is conducting in northern Iraq since 2019. 

Operation Kış Kartal seems to confirm Turkey’s intention to conduct a war mobilising a high number of military person on the field. The 60 Turkish aircraft and drones utilised (up to 165 km inside Iraq’s border according to Reuters) seems to have hit in the space of one night, 80 targets including PKK training centres, shelters, tunnels and ammunition depots. While the Iraqi army critised this military operation as a “violation of their sovereignty”, the Turkish minister of defence, Hulusi Akar, congratulated Kış Kartal  for having been “conducted with success”, stating that the targets were nothing but “terrorist targets”. A drone has nevertheless hit a Kurdish refugee camp in Makhmur leading to the death of three civilians. Turkey considers that this camp is used by the PKK and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan expressed his intent on “cleansing it”.  In any case, this recent development demonstrates that Turkey is intensifying its military operations by targeting the PKK in northern Iraq, which undoubtedly leads to civilian victims.

To cite this article: Jean Marcou, "Turkey’s military engagement in Northern Iraq, a never-ending story", French Research Centre on Iraq (CFRI), 07/02/2022 (online). URL: