Timeline of the Kurdistan Workers' Party insurgency (2015–2025)

In late July 2015, the third phase of the Kurdish–Turkish conflict between various Kurdish insurgent groups and the Turkish government erupted, following a failed two and a half year-long peace process aimed at resolving the long-running conflict.
The conflict between Turkey and the Kurdistan Workers' Party broke out again in summer 2015 following two-year-long peace negotiations. These began in late 2012, but failed to progress in light of the growing tensions on the Turkish-Syrian border in late 2014, when the Turkish state prevented its Kurdish citizens from sending support to the People's Protection Units who were fighting against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant during the Siege of Kobani. Turkey was accused of assisting the Islamic State during the siege, resulting in the widespread 2014 Kurdish riots in Turkey involving dozens of fatalities.
In November 2015, Turkish authorities said that a number of towns and areas in the Eastern Anatolia region had come under the control of PKK militants and affiliated armed organizations. According to Turkish government sources, between July 2015 and May 2016, 2,583 Kurdish insurgents were killed in Turkey and 2,366 in Iraq, as well as 483 members of the Turkish security forces. The PKK said 1,557 Turkish security forces members were killed in 2015 during the clashes in Turkish and Iraqi Kurdistan, while it lost 220 fighters. According to the International Crisis Group, 4,310 people, including 465 civilians, were killed in Turkey between July 2015 and December 2018, including Kurdish lawyer Tahir Elçi. In March 2017, the United Nations voiced "concern" over the Turkish government's operations and called for an independent assessment of the "massive destruction, killings and numerous other serious human rights violations" against the ethnic Kurdish minority.
Since 2016, the Turkish military and Syrian National Army have conducted operations against the Syrian Democratic Forces, leading to the Turkish occupation of northern Syria.
In May 2022, the conflict gained global geopolitical significance as Turkey opposed the accession of Finland and Sweden into NATO, accusing them of supporting the PKK.
On 27 February 2025 Abdullah Öcalan called for an end to the over-40-year conflict, and that the PKK disarm and disband.

Background

The Kurdish-Turkish peace process saw negotiations begin between jailed Kurdistan Workers' Party leader Abdullah Ocalan and the Turkish government in late 2012. A ceasefire was called, and the PKK agreed to withdraw from Turkish Kurdistan into Iraqi Kurdistan. In 2014, anger increased among Turkish Kurds with what they saw as the Turkish state's facilitation of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant's assault on Syrian Kurds during the Rojava–Islamist conflict, culminating in the 2014 Kurdish riots in Turkey during the Siege of Kobanî. The June 2015 Turkish general election saw Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party lose its majority, and gains for the Peoples' Democratic Party. Tensions increased further after the Suruç bombing and Ceylanpınar incident in July, after which the Turkish government launched the 2015 police raids in Turkey and attacked PKK positions in Iraq, prompting the PKK to call off its ceasefire.

Belligerents

Turkish military and affiliates

Turkish Forces consisting of Turkish Land Forces troops, Gendarmerie operatives and Police Special Operations teams are backed by the rest of the Turkish Armed Forces. They are supported by a system of "village guards" which represent a feudal part of Turkey. There have been recurring reports of the resurfacing Jitem "military police intelligence and anti-terrorist service" which had been responsible for massacres in the 1990s, and of irregular foreign jihadists, being employed.
In 2016 the Turkish government of president Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Justice and Development Party were increasingly portraying the party they oppose as an enemy of an "Islamic order", referring to the PKK and its affiliates and supporters as "atheists and Zoroastrians".

PKK and affiliates

In 2008, according to information provided by the Intelligence Resource Program of the Federation of American Scientists the strength of the organization in terms of human resources consists of approximately 4,000 to 5,000 militants of whom 3,000 to 3,500 are located in northern Iraq. With the new wave of fighting from 2015 onward, observers said that active support for the PKK had become a "mass phenomenon" in majority ethnic Kurdish cities in the Southeast of the Republic of Turkey, with large numbers of local youth joining PKK-affiliated local militant groups.
According to Turkish estimates the PKK has a much larger size than the previously stated size standing at over 32,800 active fighters spanning across north-western Syria, south-eastern Turkey, northern Iraq and north-western Iran concentrated on the Qandil mountain range.
PKK bases remain active in Northern Iraq and its leadership suspected in the Qandil Mountains in Iraq and Iran. From the traditional preceding Turkish-PKK conflicts the PKK insurgency has transitioned into urban warfare in the country's densely populated south east.

2015 timeline

July

Suruç bombing and suspected Turkish ISIL retaliations

On 20 July 2015, a bombing in the predominantly Kurdish district of Suruç, reportedly perpetrated by the Dokumacılar group linked to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, killed 32 young activists and injured over 100. Most victims were members of the Socialist Party of the Oppressed Youth Wing and the Socialist Youth Associations Federation, university-aged students who were giving a press statement on their planned trip to reconstruct the Syrian border town of Kobanî in the de facto autonomous Federation of Northern Syria - Rojava.

On 21 July, the Turkish authorities said that the PKK's military wing has killed a Turkish soldier and wounded two more in Adıyaman, in retaliation for Suruc and what they say was Turkey's collaboration with ISIL.
On 22 July, in Ceylanpinar, two policemen were shot in the head by gunmen in their sleep. A week later, however, Kurdistan Communities Union spokesman Demhat Agit said PKK was not involved, saying "these are the units independent from the PKK. They are local forces which organized themselves and not affiliated with us", despite reports that the PKK had previously claimed responsibility for the attack.
Operation Martyr Yalçın against PKK

The 21 and 22 July attacks were proclaimed a casus belli by the Turkish government, which resulted in Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu taking the decision to begin active air operations against PKK positions in Iraq. This was internationally perceived as the end of the ceasefire period in the Kurdish-Turkish conflict. The New York Times assessed that "the Iraq raids, which began late Friday and continued into Saturday, effectively ended an unstable two-year cease-fire between the Turkish government and the Kurdish militants, also known by the initials of their Kurdish name, PKK".

On 24 July, members of the PKK abducted a policeman in the province of Diyarbakir. Additionally two police officers were injured, one with life-threatening injuries, after a suspected PKK grenade attack in Hakkari.
On 25 July, two Turkish soldiers were killed and four were wounded in a car bomb attack in the province of Diyarbakir in Turkey by PKK fighters.
Operations Arslan Kulaksız and Hamza Yıldırım

Turkish Forces on 26 July reportedly again attacked the same village west of Kobani targeting Kurdish People's Protection Units fighters, and fired on a YPG vehicle west of Tell Abyad.

On 26 July, it was reported that F-16s yet again took off from Diyarbakır, this time only targeting PKK targets in Northern Iraq. Although there was no official government statement on the airstrikes, PKK sources said that one of their key bases in Hakurk was attacked. It was reported that the number of fighter jets taking part was significantly lower than the jets that took part in the previous waves of the operation. The same day, Turkish artillery shelled a PKK position in the north of Iraq over several hours.
On 27 July, in the province of Muş the Turkish head of the gendarmerie of the Malazgirt district was killed.
On 28 July, for the first time since the beginning of the operation, two Turkish F-16s bombed PKK fighters inside Turkey, in the province of Sirnak.
On 28 July, the pipeline between Turkey and Iran was blown up in the province of Agri in Turkey, according to the authorities PKK involvement was suspected while a sergeant of the Turkish army was killed; according to the army, the PKK is responsible. In another province, a police officer was kidnapped by suspected Kurdistan Workers' Party militants in southeastern Turkey.
On 28–29 July, a new wave of shelling was launched in the night and PKK camps in Zap, Metina, Gara, Avaşin-Basyan, Hakurk and the Qandil Mountains in northern Iraq were hit by Turkish fighter jets in an operation named after the recently killed gendarmerie major, Arslan Kulaksız.
On 29 July, the oil pipeline between Kirkuk and Ceyhan was blown up in the east Turkey, in the Sirnak province while in Hakkari, police quarters was under attack with heavy arms, including rocket launchers and long barrel rifles. In another attack, one soldier was killed and 4 other were wounded in an attack in the Doğubeyazıt district in the eastern province of Ağri.
On 30 July, a policeman and a civilian were killed in the town of Cinar by PKK guerilla according to the authority, while three soldiers were killed in the attack of their convoy by PKK fighters in the province of Sirnak.
On 31 July, Turkish reconnaissance aircraft once again flew over YPG territory in the north of Syria. While in Iraq, Turkish fighter jets shelling massively PKK positions.
On 31 July, Turkish fighter jets shelled bases of PKK in the north of Iraq, with 30 warplanes were involved. This operation was named Hamza Yıldırım in honor of the Corporal Hamza Yıldırım killed by the PKK in Turkey a few days earlier.
On 31 July, two policemen and two PKK fighters were killed by the PKK, in a PKK raid on a police station in Pozanti, Adana. In a separate incident, PKK militants bombed a railway line in the province of Kars in the country's east, killing a worker, while three PKK fighters were killed in Agri province.