Over 2000 PKK terrorists killed since July: minister

Interior Minister Selami Altınok has declared that more than 2,000 Kurdistan Workers Party(PKK) terrorists were neutralized during the domestic military operations, which have been held since July 22.

“The military police corps, police forces and military have conducted a total of 4,328 operations and neutralized over 2,000 PKK terrorists during the operations, which have been conducted since July 22," Altınok told reporters in Ankara on Monday.

Altınok said the imposing of the curfew in the Kurdish areas is certainly based on 'legal infrastructure'. “The only reason to impose the curfew is to enforce the security of life and property of our citizens. Turkey is acting within the framework of the law."

The minister emphatically rejected a claim that Turkey started returning back to an era which will be a repeat of a period that the state of emergency had been declared in some Kurdish areas in the 1990s.

“We will never let anybody harm our fight which we have conducted in the limits of the rule of law," Altınok emphasized.

Turkey has carried out hundreds of strikes on the terrorist organization's bases on both sides of the Iraqi-Turkish border. The strikes against PKK positions in northern Iraq, which began on July 22, were the first since March 2013, when a ceasefire was called.

For decades, it has been fighting for a Kurdish self-rule in the Southeast. The bloody campaign, continuing since the 1980s, has left over 40,000 people dead, including Turkish police officers and soldiers.

Turkey, the U.S. and the EU have listed the PKK as a terrorist organization.