ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – The Turkish ambassador to Iraq said Sunday that members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and associates of the group are Ankara’s targets in response to the recent assassination of a women’s rights activist in the city of Sulaimani. Rights activist Nagihan Akarsel, who had ideological ties to the PKK, was shot multiple times and killed in Sulaimani on Tuesday by assailants in the city’s Bakhtiyari neighborhood. Her ties to the Kurdish armed group quickly led droves of people on social media to blame Turkey for her death. “Those who are affiliated with the PKK are indeed our targets,” Turkish Ambassador Ali Riza Guney said in response to a question from Rudaw’s Payam Sarbast during a press conference in the Kurdistan Region’s capital of Erbil. Akarsel was a member of the Jineoloji research academy, which seeks to empower women in northeast Syria (Rojava), and was originally from the Turkish city of Konya. Guney added that the PKK’s presence southward across the Turkish border serves as a serious security threat to Iraq, Kurdistan Region, and Turkey. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemned the activist’s killing on Wednesday and described her as “the fifth Kurdish person of Turkish origin or critic of the Turkish government to be attacked” in the Kurdistan Region in the past year. “We are appalled by the murder of this Kurdish feminist journalist and writer, perpetrated at a time when Kurdish women are leading a revolt for women’s liberation,” RSF’s Middle East desk said, referring to ongoing weeks-long nationwide protests eastwards in Iran which originated from the country’s Kurdish areas (Rojhelat) over the death of Kurdish woman Mahsa (Zhina) Amini in custody of Iran’s so-called morality police. Iranian security forces have recently intensified their crackdown on the country’s Kurdish cities, killing at least two and wounding dozens more, according to Hengaw Human Rights Organization which monitors human rights violations in these locations. The PKK is a Kurdish armed group fighting for the increased rights of Kurds in Turkey and designated a terrorist organization by Ankara. Turkish forces regularly pursue the PKK, as well as individuals believed to be affiliated to the group through the use of drones, airstrikes, and targeted assassinations within the Kurdistan Region’s borders where the group has its headquarters.
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