Akar, speaking to broadcaster NTV, said 1,393 terrorists have been neutralized since Jan. 1.<\/p>\n
He also said five major anti-terror operations are underway at a rising pace.<\/p>\n
Turkish authorities generally use the word “neutralized” to imply the terrorists in question surrendered or were killed or captured.<\/p>\n
Since 2016, Turkey has launched four successful anti-terrorist operations across its border in northern Syria to prevent the formation of a terror corridor and enable peaceful settlement by locals: Euphrates Shield (2016), Olive Branch (2018), Peace Spring (2019), and Spring Shield (2020).<\/p>\n
In its more than 30-year terror campaign against Turkey, the PKK — listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the US, and EU — has been responsible for the deaths of over 40,000 people, including women, children, and infants.<\/p>\n
Akar also said there are no COVID-19 cases among the soldiers in operation zones.<\/p>\n
“Fortunately, we have not had any cases in our operation areas. It was the result of our friends’ devoted and conscious work,” Akar noted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar on Friday said the country has neutralized over 1,300 YPG\/PKK terrorists since Jan. 1. Akar, speaking to broadcaster NTV, said 1,393 terrorists have been neutralized since Jan. 1. He also said five major anti-terror operations are underway at a rising pace. Turkish authorities generally use the word “neutralized” to imply …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":65808,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[171],"tags":[78478,78337],"class_list":["post-65807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-turkey","tag-turkey-news","tag-ypg-pkk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65807\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}