MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 16th February, 2021) Turkey's defense and interior ministers, Hulusi Akar and Suleyman Soylu, respectively, have held a meeting with the country's main opposition leader, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, in the wake of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) purported killing of 13 Turkish civilians, media reported on Tuesday.
On Sunday, Akar said that the country's armed forces had completed Operation Claw-Eagle 2 in Iraq's region of Gara, killing 48 PKK militants. The minister said that as a result of the offensive, the bodies of 13 previously kidnapped Turkish citizens were found in a cave in the mountainous region.
In the wake of the news, Kilicdaroglu's Republican People's Party accused the government of acting too slowly to free the captives even though the issue was previously raised in parliament.
According to the Anadolu news agency, the ministers briefed the head of Republican People's Party on Turkey's anti-terror offensive in Gara during a closed-door meeting that lasted about an hour.
Later on Tuesday, the ministers are set to address the parliament on the anti-terror operation, the news agency added.
The Turkish government has been fighting the PKK, a Kurdish far-left militant and political group which seeks to establish Kurdish autonomy in Turkey, since the early 1980s. The PKK and Ankara signed a ceasefire agreement in 2013, but it collapsed just two years later over several terror attacks supposedly committed by PKK militants.
