Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened to strike a refugee settlement in Iraqi Kurdistan on the grounds that it is a breeding ground for rebels of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

In a live interview on the state-run TRT news channel, Erdogan said that if the United Nations did not “clean it up, we will do it as a UN member.”

Erdogan claimed that Makhmour, which lies 180 kilometers (112 miles) south of the Turkish border, posed as grave a threat as Qandil, a mountain range straddling the Iraq-Iran border where top PKK commanders are based. “How long are we supposed to be patient?” he asked.

The warnings came as Turkish troops continue a large-scale offensive against the PKK along a mountainous strip of territory along Iraq’s border with Turkey. The aim is to disrupt the PKK’s access from Qandil to mobile bases dotting the length of the Turkish-Iraqi border all the way to northeast Syria where the PKK’s Syrian franchise runs an autonomous administration under the protection of the United States. The offensive also seeks to prevent the PKK from using those bases to launch cross-border attacks inside Turkey.