Terrorists attacked an army border unit in Şemdinli, Hakkari province, at 2 a.m. on June 19. Nine soldiers were killed and 14 were wounded in the attack, the General Staff announced. Turkish newspapers put the size of the group that attacked at around 250. Two other soldiers were later killed by a land mine in the area.Turkey will never give into violence and acts of terror, and terrorists will “drown in their own blood,” an angry and sorrowful Prime Minister Erdoğan stated at a memorial ceremony at the Van Gendarmerie Security Command while condemning the brutal killings of the soldiers. Erdoğan went to the Turkish-Iraqi border area on June 20 following the funeral ceremony for the slain soldiers in Van to see firsthand the area where terrorists crossed illegally into Turkey to carry out the attack.
Claims emerged following the attack that the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) had flaws in intelligence gathering. Gen. Gürbüz Kaya, who briefed Erdoğan, said the first images regarding terrorist activity in the area were taken a few hours before the attack. Gen. Kaya also stated that they started to fire weapons into the area but that they did not receive any response, making them think that the images were of “either shepherds or smugglers.”
A photograph of the prime minister sitting close to the border was criticized by some on the grounds that it was a sign of intimidation. Maj. Gen. Fahri Kır, the head of the Turkish military’s internal security operations, said in a press conference on Friday that it “would not be appropriate to keep the prime minister and commanders of the Turkish Republic in a standing position at the border.”
