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Kurdish fighters have released video footage which they claim shows a Turkish Sikorsky helicopter being shot down as it attempted to land troops in the Amediye district in Duhok, Iraqi Kurdistan.
The loss of a Turkish helicopter, if confirmed, is one of several recent setbacks in the country’s military operations against guerrillas linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The reports of losses from the helicopter and in fighting earlier this month were not picked up by Turkish media channels.
The video footage, which appears to have been shot in night vision and has a timestamp from the night of 19 August, shows a formation of helicopters flying overhead and a projectile being fired from the ground. It cuts to the form of a helicopter falling, and then a shot of distant flames.
Gerilla TV, the PKK-affiliated channel which published the footage, said the Sikorsky helicopter was struck from close range while attempting to land troops during a raid in the mountainous area near Amediye. The helicopter crashed nearby and remained on fire for several hours, said Gerilla TV.
The Turkish government restarted its decades-long conflict with the PKK in 2015, after the collapse of a short-lived peace process. In the ensuing years, Turkey sent military forces to crack down on its mainly Kurdish southeastern provinces, where support for Kurdish self-rule is strong. It also launched military operations into largely Kurdish regions in northern Syria and northern Iraq.
Turkey’s state-owned Anadolu Agency routinely publishes reports on the number of enemy combatants it has “neutralised” – a term thought to refer to those killed, captured or who surrender during fighting. News of Turkish losses is mostly missing from the picture, likely as a consequence of the Justice and Development Party (AKP)’s practice of censoring unfavourable news.
Murat Karayılan, the senior PKK commander who heads the group’s armed wing, said in a speech this month the Kurdish fighters had inflicted high casualties on the Turkish military, forcing the AKP to hide the number of losses.
As well as censoring unfavourable news, Karayılan said Turkey had taken to employing mercenaries whose deaths could be more easily covered up.
“They created a mercenary army so that no matter how many you kill, the public doesn’t hear of it, because they’re made to sign a non-disclosure agreement,” he said.
Earlier in August, Gerilla TV reported that Kurdish fighters had killed six Turkish soldiers in the Amediye area.
Turkey’s operations in northern Iraq include the use of airstrikes and artillery attacks, often on residential areas. In July, Turkish shelling killed nine civilians in the village of Zakho in Duhok governorate.
In July, the independent conflict monitoring organisation International Crisis Group reported its estimate that 1,360 Turkish state security forces had died in the fighting since the resumption of conflict in 2015. The group estimated that 3,878 PKK militants had been killed, as well as 600 non-combatant civilians.
