Turkey: PKK have killed 14,000 since 1984

ANKARA

The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has killed more than 6,700 civilians since it launched its offensive in 1984, according to figures supplied by a Turkish security source.

The deaths of noncombatants, including woman and children, highlight the toll of more than 30 years of fighting, mostly in Turkey’s southern and eastern provinces.

The statistics, provided on condition of anonymity, show the PKK operations have led to the deaths of 6,741 civilians up to this month. Another 14,257 civilians have been wounded.

Under its now-imprisoned leader, Abdullah Ocalan, who has been the sole inmate of an island prison off Istanbul since his capture in 1999, the PKK conducted its first attacks on Aug. 15, 1984 when it targeted police and Gendarmerie bases in Eruh, Siirt province, and Semdinli, a district in nearby Hakkari, southeast Turkey.

Those initial attacks saw one soldier martyred and 12 people injured.

Founded in the late 1970s, the PKK is considered a terror organization by Turkey, the EU and the U.S.

Over the following 31 years, the militant group has carried out 83,500 attacks.

Over a 24-hour period from July 8, 1987, the PKK killed 44 civilians, including women and children, in four attacks in Mardin and Sirnak provinces in in southeast.

Six years later -- on May 24, 1993 -- PKK fighters killed 33 security forces personnel and seven civilians on the Bingol-Elazig highway in central eastern Turkey.

On July 27, 2008, a PKK bomb killed 18 civilians, including five children, in Istanbul’s Gungoren neighborhood.

Last year, protests on Oct. 6 and 7 across Turkey in response to the government’s perceived inaction over the siege of Kobani led to the deaths of 33 civilians and two police officers.

Between January and July this year, PKK members conducted 83 attacks, according to the anonymous source. Over the last 10 months, 62 civilians were killed by insurgents.

Since the outbreak of hostilities, Turkish security forces have killed 22,374 PKK militants, wounding 480,000.

A total of 7,230 members of the security forces -- police, soldiers and village guards -- were martyred and 21,128 wounded.

The fighting between the PKK and the security forces saw a fragile lull for a two-and-a-half year period from early 2013 as the government engaged in a "solution process" in an attempt to end the conflict.

Talks between the PKK and the state intelligence officials broke down in April and last month, the PKK launched renewed attacks on the security forces in response to the July 20 Suruc suicide bombing that killed 33 pro-Kurdish activists.

Four days after Suruc, Turkey launched airstrikes against the PKK in Turkey and northern Iraq and since the outbreak more than 60 security forces members have been killed.

In addition, hundreds have been arrested in a crackdown on militant groups that also include leftist organizations and Daesh.