Operation Murat
1998 Turkish military operation against the PKK
Operation Murat, named after the Murat River located in the region, was an operation concentrated in the Diyarbakir, Bingol and Bitlis triangle, mostly in the mountains located inside the triangle, against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which is listed as a terrorist organization internationally by a number of states and organizations, including the United States, NATO and the EU. With the participation of 40,000 personnel and 3,000 village guards, it is the largest military operation Turkey has conducted inside of its borders. The operation lasted for two weeks and was centered on the Genç district in the province of Bingöl. It was in the area where the Turkish military destroyed two PKK camps in the past.
Operation
Light infantry units were inserted in designated centers by helicopters on 23 April, on the first day, 14 battalions were landed in 14 different regions. The deployment of 5 thousand personnel to 14 regions with 18 helicopters was completed in 5 hours and contact was made with the PKK, which resulted in 77 PKK members were killed. The deployment of 40,000 personnel in the region was completed on 24 April. Security forces from many regions of Turkey were shifted to the operation, and units from Trabzon, Kars, Erzincan and Sarıkamış were dispatched to the region. The 7th Corps participated in the encirclement operation from Kulp and Muş regions, the 8th Corps from Palu, and the 9th Corps from Lice and Genç rural areas. Şenoğul said that the PKK is in a great panic and said, they cannot find food. It seems that the news that Şemdin Sakık was caught had a bad effect on their morale, he said.
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This entry incorporates text from “Operation Murat” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.