Erdogan threatens to crush militants in northern Iraq

Turkish President, Tayyip Erdogan, on Wednesday threatened that soon, the country would crush militants in northern Iraq.

This is coming after recent statement by Turkey’s Foreign Minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, that Ankara and Baghdad would carry out a joint offensive against Kurdish militants in Iraq.

“We are checking the terror nests in northern Iraq at every chance. Soon, we will stomp very strongly on the terrorists there,” Erdogan told local administrators in Ankara.

Cavusoglu had said that Turkey and Iraq’s central government could start a joint military operation against Kurdish militants after Iraqi parliamentary elections scheduled for May, 2018.

Turkish warplanes regularly launch strikes against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has camps in the mountains of northern Iraq, near the border with Turkey.