Turkey targets Yazidi militia in Iraq over PKK links - Al-Monitor: The Middle Eastʼs leading independent news source since 2012

Saad Salloum

Saad Salloum

Oct 6, 2020

A picture taken on February 5, 2019, shows a general view of the damaged buildings in the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar. - For decades in the mountainous region of Sinjar in Iraq's diverse north, the lives of many revolved around their lands, but now many Sunni Arab farmers are estranged from their fields out of fear of reprisal attacks. The region, which borders Syria is home to an array of communities -- Shiite and Sunni Arabs, Kurds, and Yazidis -- which formed a patchwork that was ripped apart when the — A general view of the damaged buildings in the northern town of Sinjar, Iraq, Feb. 5, 2019. — ZAID AL-OBEIDI/AFP via Getty Images

The Sinjar Resistance Units (YBS) is subject to Turkish shelling every so often, although it is an officially recognized force by the Iraqi government and registered as part of the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) with the Ministry of Defense.

YBS members are Iraqi Yazidis from Sinjar who are often attacked because some consider them a local wing of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which Turkey classifies as a terrorist movement.

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A picture of jailed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan is seen in a PKK mausoleum in Sinjar region, northern Iraq, May 1, 2016. They share little more than an enemy and struggle to communicate on the battlefield, but together two relatively obscure groups have opened up a new front against Islamic State militants in a remote corner of Iraq. The unlikely alliance between the Sinjar Resistance Units, an offshoot of a leftist Kurdish organisation, and Abdulkhaleq al-Jarba, a Arab tribal mili

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