On January 25, hundreds of Kurdish protestors stormed a base of the Turkish military near the northern Iraqi city of Dahuk in response to a Turkish airstrike that killed two Kurdish civilians two days ago.
According to the Kurdish NRT TV, Turkish soldiers opened fire at the protestors killing at least one and injuring many others. However, the protestors managed to storm the base and set it on fire. Photos of the protestors burning and capturing heavy weapons of the Turkish military were published on social networks.
Angry Kurdish civilian protesters took over Turkish army base in Shiladze, Iraqi Kurdistan. Obviously they are in control of tanks and weapons. Believe me these guys are not the PKK. But people simply had enough of being unjustifiably Murdered by Turkey. pic.twitter.com/gLKGyJ7fol
— Yerevan Saeed (@YerevanSaeed) January 26, 2019
#BREAKING Update
The protesters burned the headquarter and all of the tanks, hummer, camps, all the guns that Turkish #army uses there.#TwitterKurds #iraq #Iranian #Rojava #YPG @DefenseUnitsYPJ @YpgInt @abdullahawez @AramKrdstn @KamalChomani @D_abdulkader #twitterkurds pic.twitter.com/f8Hyb2It6x— Hana Çomanî (@HanaComani) January 26, 2019
Most of the Turkish soldiers who were inside the base were captured by the protestors. Later, they reportedly handed them over to the local Peshmerga force. Two agents of the Turkish National Intelligence Organization, known as MIT, were injured while they were trying to resist the protestors.
“Turkish warplanes are currently flying over the area,” the NRT’s reporter in Dahuk said.
The Turkish Air Force (TAF) carries out airstrikes on positions of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the northern part of Kurdistan on a regular basis. However, the January 24 airstrike killed two civilians, Bakhtiyar Hasan and Ziad Hituti, while they were on a hike near their village, Jamki Tuii, according to the Rudaw news network.
Such attacks on Turkish military bases in northern Iraq have never been seen before. Nonetheless, the situation is not expected to escalate. Turkey is formally coordinating all of its military actions inside Iraq with the country’s federal government and the Kurdistan Region Government (KRG).
