Turkey could leverage hostage tragedy to reach Sinjar
After the deaths of 13 Turkish captives in Iraqi Kurdistan during a raid against Kurdish militants, Turkey might be weighing an offensive against Sinjar, but vocal objections by pro-Iranian groups heavily deployed in the area are bound to complicate such a mission.
Turkey’s latest cross-border raid has failed, but President Recep Tayyip Erdogan seems determined to make use of the killings of 13 Turkish citizens whose remains were discovered in a cave in the Gare region in northern Iraq, where outlawed Kurdish militants are based.
The question of why the Turkish government had taken no action to rescue the hostages held by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) over the past five years despite numerous pleas by their families has gone unanswered. Yet Erdogan has already turned the tragic incident into a propaganda tool in both domestic and international politics.
