Ankara silent on Turkish agents allegedly caught in Iraq assassination plot
Kurdish militants claim to have captured two Turkish intelligence officers planning to assassinate a senior Kurdistan Workers Party figure, though it's not clear what the group is demanding in exchange for their release.
A Kurdish militant group claimed today that it has captured Turkish intelligence officers. Diyar Xerib, a Kurdish leader linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), said the PKK had “arrested” two Turkish nationals working for Turkey’s national spy agency MIT, but had refrained from publicizing the incident so as not to create problems for the local government.
“No doubt the PKK can publish news about the arrests of the MIT officials who wanted to make the area a place to carry out their dirty operations, the biggest of which was to assassinate a prominent PKK official,” Xerib told the pro-PKK Roj news outlet.
News that the PKK had captured Turkish intelligence officials first surfaced last week. Accounts vary but according to several Iraqi Kurdish news organizations, the Turkish spies had traveled to Sulaimaniyah, the de facto administrative capital of the eponymous province in the eastern part of Iraqi Kurdistan.
The men were said to be planning to assassinate a senior PKK figure, most likely top field commander Cemil Bayik, and ended up ensnared themselves. Bayik occasionally travels to Sulaimaniyah for meetings as well as for medical treatment.
