Operation Tigris Hammer

[Jay]

OPERATION TIGRIS HAMMER
Security Classification: TOP SECRET

SITUATION REPORT

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OVERVIEW Following the completion of Tigris Shield's and continued PKK terror attacks in Izmir and Ankara, the Prime Minister has authorized the ground component of the campaign against PKK infrastructure and personnel in Iraqi Kurdistan, designated Tigris Hammer. The operation proceeds under the same right of self-defense against imminent and ongoing harm invoked for Tigris Shield, updated to reflect findings from the Izmir investigation and subsequent cross-border intelligence operations against PKK bombmaking and logistics networks. Tigris Hammer commits three divisions, 19,000 personnel, supported by 6,000 corps troops (artillery, engineer, military police, and Gendarmerie special operations elements) along three axes of advance into the Duhok pocket and the Bahdinan and Zap approaches. The operation is composed of three subordinate campaigns: Tigris Saber, the initial ground advance intended to draw PKK elements toward a defensible perimeter; Tigris Storm, the airborne envelopment severing PKK reinforcement routes into Duhok; and Tigris Scale, the sustained mountain clearance of the Ari–Choman corridor. Objectives are aimed at the degradation of the PKK's operational infrastructure and the denial of sanctuary. Operations will focus on smaller towns, transit corridors, and open terrain where TSK armor, air, and mobility advantages are decisive rather than a liability. Execution is contingent on completion of diplomatic consultations with allied governments. Joint Task Force Iraq (JTF-I) will hold forces at final readiness pending execution order.

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BELLIGERENTS

BLUFOR	OPFOR
Republic of Türkiye	Kurdistan Worker's Party HPG YJA-STAR Iraq (Nominal — no effective operational control in AO) Socialist Republic of Thailand (Alleged Support)[1]

Joint Task Force Iraq (JTF-I) Lt. Gen. Batu Celal, Commanding Maj. Gen. Ercan Akinci, Deputy Commander	HPG Theater Command Murat Karayılan Duran Kalkan Bahoz Erdal
3rd "Gergedan" Combined Arms Armored Division 11th Armored Regiment 1st Tank Battalion 2nd Tank Battalion 11th Armored Reconnaissance Battalion 20th Mechanized Rifle Regiment 1st Mechanized Rifle Battalion 2nd Mechanized Rifle Battalion 3rd Mechanized Rifle Battalion 22nd Mechanized Rifle Regiment 1st Mechanized Rifle Battalion 2nd Mechanized Rifle Battalion 3rd Mechanized Rifle Battalion 41st Self-Propelled Artillery Regiment 8th Combat Engineer Battalion (attached) 5th Reconnaissance Battalion	Bahdinan Front 1st Tabur "Mala Arab" 2nd Tabur "Zakho" 3rd Tabur "Qadish" YJA-STAR Bahdinan Company Front logistics & courier network
5th "Kartal" Airborne Division 1st Airborne Regiment 1st Airborne Battalion 2nd Airborne Battalion 3rd Airborne Battalion 2nd Air Assault Regiment 1st Air Assault Battalion 2nd Air Assault Battalion 3rd Air Assault Battalion 3rd Air Assault Regiment 1st Air Assault Battalion 2nd Air Assault Battalion 3rd Air Assault Battalion 15th Special Reconnaissance Battalion 5th Airborne Engineer Battalion 11th Airborne Fire Support Battalion	Zap Front 1st Tabur "Namrik" 2nd Tabur "Mrebah" 3rd Tabur "Bakrman-Baurki" YJA-STAR Zap Company
10th Mountain Division 31st Mountain Rifle Regiment 1st Mountain Rifle Battalion 2nd Mountain Rifle Battalion 3rd Mountain Rifle Battalion 32nd Mountain Rifle Regiment 1st Mountain Rifle Battalion 2nd Mountain Rifle Battalion 3rd Mountain Rifle Battalion 33rd Mountain Rifle Regiment 1st Mountain Rifle Battalion 2nd Mountain Rifle Battalion 3rd Mountain Rifle Battalion 61st Mountain Reconnaissance Battalion 16th Mountain Artillery Battalion 10th Combat Engineer Battalion (partial)	Gare–Qandil Front 1st Tabur "Ari" 2nd Tabur "Choman" Qandil Reserve/Training Tabur YJA-STAR Gare Company

CONFIDENTIAL MISSION OPERATION GİZLİLİKLE GÖREV OPERASYONU​ This document is classified and intended solely for official use within the Turkish Armed Forces. It contains sensitive operational details and is not to be viewed, shared, or disseminated outside of authorized personnel. Unauthorized access or distribution of this document is strictly prohibited. Please ensure the return of this document to the Turkish General Staff Building, located at Bakanlıklar, Çankaya, Ankara.

SECRET Operation Parameters​ Mission Planning: Objective Definition: Sever PKK reinforcement and resupply routes into the Duhok pocket; secure the Zakho–Mala Arab–Qadish corridor and the crossings toward Erbil, Mosul, and Sulaimaniyah; conduct sustained clearance of fixed PKK infrastructure in the Ari–Choman corridor. Area of Operations: Duhok Governorate and adjoining Erbil Governorate approaches. Peshmerga-garrisoned routes are deconflicted via a standing channel with the Kurdistan Regional Government and are not to be entered absent separate authorization. Pre-Mission Preparation Force Generation: 3rd CAAD, 5th Airborne, and 10th Mountain at full readiness. Corps troops staged at forward marshalling areas along the border. Follow-on mechanized brigade held at Land Forces Command reserve, uncommitted. Detainee Handling Gendarmerie Officers' elements, attached to each division, conduct initial screening at forward collection points, separated from combat units. Personnel held past initial screening were transferred to a facility inside Turkish territory within 72 hours. Personnel of intelligence value transferred to MIT custody under Justice Ministry-approved interrogation standards.

END OF DOCUMENT BELGENİN SONU​

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CAMPAIGN REGISTER

Phase	Description	Status
Tigris Saber – Phase I: Border Crossing & Approach 3rd CAAD, Ibrahim Khalil to Mala Arab	3rd "Gergedan" Combined Arms Armored Division crosses at Ibrahim Khalil and advances through Zakho, Dar Huzan, and Hezawa. Limited resistance is expected through these towns; PKK forces are assessed to fall back on Mala Arab and commit to its defense. Division secures Mala Arab to conclude Phase I. Kirpi-led route clearance and engineer bridging are prioritized across the Dar Huzan wadis.	AUTHORIZED – AWAITING EXECUTE ORDER
Tigris Saber – Phase II: Advance to Qadish 3rd CAAD, Batifa to Qadish	Following consolidation at Mala Arab, 3rd CAAD reorganizes and advances from Batifa to Bamerne, continuing to Qadish. Terrain and road quality degrade along this axis; close air support constrained by ridgeline masking. Phase contingent on Tigris Storm securing the division's northern flank prior to commitment past Batifa.	AUTHORIZED – AWAITING EXECUTE ORDER
Tigris Storm: Airborne Envelopment 5th Airborne, Bahadre Mountain Pass – four-point insertion	5th "Kartal" Airborne Division air-assaults into Bahadre Mountain Pass and splits into four elements: westward to Namrik, eastward to Mrebah, with additional detachments assaulting Bakrman and Baurki. Objective is to sever all routes by which PKK elements north of Duhok could reinforce Batifa, isolating Duhok and protecting 3rd CAAD's Phase II advance. Executes concurrent with the final 48 hours of Phase I. T129 ATAK conducts preparatory fires on landing zones ahead of troop-carrying serials.	AUTHORIZED – AWAITING EXECUTE ORDER
Tigris Scale: Mountain Clearance 10th Mountain, Beduhe to Ari / Choman	10th Mountain Division crosses at Beduhe and advances through Kani Masi and Bere Sile, turning east through Resava and Gunde Site to Dore, where the division splits into two assault groups — one toward Ari, one toward Choman — for sustained clearance of fixed PKK infrastructure. Longest phase of the operation; terrain favors ambush and mine warfare over maneuver. Weather window over the Choman passes assessed at six to eight weeks from execution before closure.	AUTHORIZED – AWAITING EXECUTE ORDER

 

[Jay]

SECRET
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The trains came first. Flatcars rolled into the railhead at Silopi through the night, tank after tank chained down under tarpaulins that did nothing to disguise their shape, and by morning the yard was a forest of gun barrels pointed at a sky. Ramps went down. Engines that had sat cold for the loading turned over one by one, diesel smoke hanging low over the gravel, and the tanks rolled off under their own power onto marshaling ground.

Officers with clipboards walked the lines, matching hull numbers to manifests, waving vehicles left or right into columns that would not move again until the order came. Fuel trucks worked the rows. Somewhere, a loudspeaker was calling names, company by company, and nobody hurried, and nobody was late.

They came back from leave in a row of buses that cruised into garrison gates at two in the morning, trains disgorging men with duffel bags onto platforms where military police checked names against a roster, private cars driven by fathers or brothers dropping sons at the wire with a handshake through the window. Gate logs filled a page an hour. By the second day, the barracks that had been half-empty for a rotation of leave were full again, bunks made, kit laid out, men who had been civilians three days earlier standing in formation like they had never left it.

The columns then began moving south in the dark and kept moving through the day that followed, tank transporters and troop trucks and fuel tankers stretched for kilometers along the highway toward the border, engines a single continuous note that towns could hear coming a quarter hour before the first vehicle appeared. In Batman, in Mardin, in the small crossroads towns that existed mostly because a road happened to pass through them, people came out to watch. Flags appeared from somewhere, car windows, balconies, the hands of children held up on their fathers' shoulders, and horns started up in a ragged, spreading.

Outside one garrison gate, a woman in a headscarf held her son's face in both hands and kissed his forehead, once, and said something to him that nobody else needed to hear, and stepped back before he could see her face change. His father stood a pace behind her and didn't do that. He straightened his son's collar instead, and when the boy climbed up into the truck bed, his father raised his hand to his brow, held it there a beat longer than dropped it. The same scene repeated itself, with small variations, at every gate along every road the columns used, hundreds of times over, until it stopped being a scene at all and simply became what departure looked like that week.

At Görümlü and the forward strips north of it, the airborne division filled its bases slowly. Formations assembled on tarmac still dark from the last rain, kit stacked in neat rows beside each man, and the aircraft waited for them in long silent lines, rotors still, ramps down, ground crews doing the last of the work by floodlight because the days had stopped being long enough for daylight alone. Company by company, the formations broke apart into loading order and came back together at the base of the ramps. Some of the division's air assault units had begun deploying from helicopters in final preparations.

Further west, the mechanized regiments came together around their vehicles, checking hatches, stowing kit, loading belts of ammunition that had arrived by truck under guard and left again the moment the count was verified. Whole battalions stood parked in staging fields turned to churned mud by the weight of everything sitting on them, engines silent.

At the Joint Task Force operations center outside Diyarbakır, nobody was going home. Coffee machines running dry and being refilled, cots appearing in side offices, a stack of pizza boxes accumulating by the duty desk. Phones rang in overlapping waves. Status boards updated themselves in small increments all night, green replacing amber one line at a time as units reported final readiness from railheads and marshaling grounds and forward strips scattered across three provinces. Runners moved between offices with printouts nobody had bothered to route electronically because paper was faster when everyone in the building already knew where to find everyone else. Somewhere past midnight, a junior officer walked the length of the main floor collecting empty cups as Operation Hammer began to piece itself together.

The Turkish Pilots walked out of the briefing room, their helmets under one arm, as their eyes narrowed at the sight of their F-16s waiting on the flight line. The sleek fighter gleams in the fading light. Their aircraft were already outfitted with weapons systems and ready for take-off thanks to the diligent work of their ground crews. The pilots had only just completed their air campaign and were now on standby to assist the ground forces apart of Operation Hammer.

The first piece of Operation Hammer was already underway. Units attached to the 61st Mountain Reconnaissance Battalion, a special operations unit, were already on their way to the Qandil Mountains. The 1st and 2nd Squad of 1st Platoon of the 61st would HALO drop into the outskirts of Erbil. Their aircraft would take them to 36.19262, 43.76566, and 36.32002, 44.28624 where the two squadrons began surveillance operations. All units were equipped for a week-long surveillance operation carrying all the ammo, MREs, and surveillance equipment they needed for the duration of their mission. All other Turkish vehicles and aircraft were fueled and armed, their personnel briefed and readied. Ground forces checked all their equipment and made sure they were prepared for their impending assault.