Four Iraqi security forces injured in stand-off with Turkish Kurdish refugees

Ankara believes the Makhmour camp is an 'incubator' for PKK militias

Kurdistan Workers Party troops on patrol in the Makhmour area near Mosul. AFP

Four Iraqi security officers were wounded when residents of a Turkish Kurdish refugee camp protested against new government controls on the facility.

Tension erupted on Saturday when a government delegation and security forces began building a fence around the Makhmour camp, near the northern city of Mosul, a provincial official said.

“The residents started to throw stones at the delegation and the Iraqi army, leaving four officers lightly wounded,” the official said.

The camp, established in 1998 with UN support, houses refugees who fled the Turkish army's scorched-earth campaign against villages suspected of supporting the rebel Kurdistan Workers' Party, known as the PKK.

Ankara regards the camp as a recruiting ground for the PKK in its deadly four-decade insurgency against the Turkish state.

The camp has been one of many targets for the Turkish military as part of operations against PKK fighters in Iraq. Several camp officials identified as PKK operatives have been killed.

Camp 'cleansing'

During a major military operation in northern Iraq in 2021, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned Iraq that Ankara will “cleanse” the camp, saying it was a safe haven for Kurdish militants.

Mr Erdogan then threatened to push his military campaign further into Iraqi territory, describing the camp, located 180km south of the Turkish border, as an “incubator” for Kurdish militias belonging to the PKK.

“We will not allow the gruesome separatist organisation to use Makhmour as an incubator for terrorism,” he said at the time. “We will continue to exterminate terrorism at its source. It must be shut down.”

Perimeter fence

A security official in Baghdad said the government “plans to erect a perimeter fence with a single entrance to secure the camp and to bring it under the government security forces' eyes”.

Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity. The government is yet to speak officially.

The PKK has been waging an insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984, initially seeking an independent Kurdish state before changing their demands and seeking an autonomous region within Turkey. The conflict has killed about 40,000 people, many of them civilians.

It has training camps and bases in autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan and is designated a terrorist group by the US and EU.

Ankara has launched a series of military operations against PKK fighters in Iraq and Syria, causing casualties not only among the fighters but also civilians.

Iraqi Kurdistan has complicated relations with the PKK because its presence in the region impedes trade with neighbouring Turkey.

The move by the Iraqi government is part of a bigger plan to control the movement of Turkish and Iranian Kurdish dissident groups in Iraq’s Kurdistan region and areas under federal government control.

In late November, Baghdad sent Border Guard units to its borders with Turkey and Iran in a bid to stop attacks from its neighbours against the groups.