Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu announced today that Turkey will establish a military base in Metina, a mountainous area close to the Turkish border in Iraqi Kurdistan, to surveil the broader region. Speaking to members of the ruling Justice and Development Party's executive board, Soylu said, “Metina is an important region. Just as we did in Syria, we will build a base here and monitor the region. This area is a route to Qandil; we will control this route.”

Soylu was referring to the Qandil mountains on the Iraq-Iran border, where the main command center of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) is based. He did not clarify his comparison with Syria, where Turkish troops occupy over 8,000 square miles in the north of the country, including Kurdish-majority Afrin, where the terrain is mostly flat. However, there, too, the Turkish presence is principally aimed at torpedoing PKK efforts to establish contiguity between the Kurdish-majority areas in the northeast with Afrin to the West.

A spokesman for the Kurdistan Regional Government had not responded to Al-Monitor’s request for comment as of time of publication.

Soylu’s statement came as Turkish special forces backed by F-16 fighter jets, helicopter gunships and drones kept up an offensive against PKK targets launched on April 23 in Metina and the neighboring Avashin and Basyan regions. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the offensive, dubbed “Operation Claw Lightning,” was designed to “completely end the presence of the terror threat … along our southern border.”