DIYARBAKIR, Turkey — Sinjar, Iraq, is shaping up to be the essential gem in someone's crown, but there are several contenders. Turkey, Iran and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) are all vying for control of the strategic area — all for different reasons.

Turkey is working to make good on its threat to demolish PKK strongholds in Iraq by continuing to bombard the group's positions. Though such operations have been ongoing for years, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan stepped up the rhetoric earlier this month, vowing, “If the authorities there don’t solve the problems of Qandil and Sinjar and if [Iraq] does not undertake what is to be done, then we will raze those places to the ground."

He has followed up the threats with a series of air raids. The pro-government Daily Sabah reported Turkish forces killed 96 PKK fighters in the mountains of Qandil and Zap and destroyed or seized caches of PKK explosives. Turkey, the United States and the European Union consider the group to be a terrorist organization.

The PKK's main headquarters is in the Qandil Mountains in northeast Iraq near the Iran border. Sinjar — known to the Kurds as Shengal — is home to the Yazidis, a Kurdish religious minority, and is in northwest Iraq near the Syria border. Erdogan is interested because when the PKK came to the region in 2014 to fight the Islamic State (IS) and defend the Yazidis, they then refused to leave despite strong reactions from Turkey and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan. This eventually made Sinjar a prime target for Turkey.