Turkish forces have neutralized 31 PKK terrorists so far in northern Iraq as part of Turkey's new anti-terror operations there, the country's defense minister said Sunday.

Hulusi Akar was commenting after he and Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) commanders inspected the 3rd Infantry Division Command in Yuksekova district of Turkey’s southeastern Hakkari province and received a briefing on the newly launched Operations Pence-Simsek and Pence-Yildirim.

"So far, a total of 1,132 terror targets have been hit with our land fire support vehicles. Our Air Force also achieved great success as a whole, hitting 120 targets in total. Along with these, we evaluate that the terrorists have suffered great casualties," he said.

Noting that so far, a total of 31 terrorists have been neutralized as part of the current operations in the regions, Akar said that six soldiers had been wounded.

Turkey's Defense Ministry later announced that one soldier was martyred in the Operations Pence-Simsek area.

"Our fight is against all terrorists, especially the PKK. The world should know that we do not have any problems with any ethnic group, sect or religious group and that we are not targeting them," he noted.

Underlining that Turkey only targets terrorists, he also stressed that they will continue launching anti-terror operations until the last terrorist is neutralized.

Turkey on Friday launched Operations Pence-Simsek and Pence-Yildirim in northern Iraq’s Metina and Avasin-Basyan regions near Turkey’s borders, Akar announced early Saturday.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said later Saturday that the operation aims to completely eliminate the terrorist threat along Turkey’s southern borders.

Turkish authorities often use the word “neutralized” in statements to imply the terrorists in question surrendered or were killed or captured.

The PKK terrorist group often uses bases in northern Iraq, just across Turkey’s southern border, to hide and plot terrorist attacks in Turkey.

In its more than 35-year terror campaign against Turkey, the PKK – listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the US and the European Union – has been responsible for the deaths of at least 40,000 people, including women, children and infants.

'Biden's remarks deny their own documents'

Touching on US President Joe Biden's remarks on the events of 1915, Akar noted that the statement is a distortion of historical facts and does not reflect the truth.

He emphasized that the allegations are extremely unfounded, groundless and have no basis.

"Everyone should know that this work belongs only to scientists, historians, that they [the claims] are not a matter of political decisions…Our position on this issue is very clear," Akar said.

On Saturday, Biden called the events of 1915 a "genocide," breaking with American presidents' long-held tradition of refraining from using the term.

Turkish stance on 1915 events

Turkey's position on the events of 1915 is that the deaths of Armenians in eastern Anatolia took place when some sided with invading Russians and revolted against Ottoman forces. A subsequent relocation of Armenians resulted in numerous casualties.

Turkey objects to the presentation of these incidents as "genocide," describing them as a tragedy in which both sides suffered casualties.

Ankara has repeatedly proposed the creation of a joint commission of historians from Turkey and Armenia as well as international experts to tackle the issue.

In 2014, Recep Tayyip Erdogan – Turkey’s then-prime minister and now president – expressed his condolences to the descendants of Armenians who lost their lives in the events of 1915./aa

France will bring a new anti-terrorism legislation specifically devoted to intelligence, in the wake of recent attacks carried out by lone, radicalized individuals, the interior minister announced.

The bill will be tabled on April 28 at the request of President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Jean Castex, Gerald Darmanin told Journal du Dimanche on Saturday.

The new law will strengthen technological surveillance and provide for “updating and perpetuating the use of algorithms, that is the automated processing of connection data, by the General Directorate of Internal Security (DGSI),” he said.

Darmanin said the new anti-terror measure is important given that authorities are now dealing with “isolated individuals, increasingly young, unknown to the intelligence services before their act and without necessarily any link with established Islamist networks.” They, however, heavily use the internet and social media rather than traditional telephone means, which makes it difficult to locate them.

This was the case of attackers in the assassination of history teacher Samuel Paty in October, and the stabbing of a police official inside the Rambouillet police station on Friday.

The young Chechan immigrant in Paty’s case had escaped vigilance but was in touch with contacts in Syria through Instagram messaging, Darmanin said. He added: “the law must allow us to be more efficient, by strengthening us in the field of technology used by terrorists.”

The bill will also address other terrorism-related issues such as increasing the duration of administrative follow-ups of those released from prison on terror charges, from one year to two years. And improving access to the socio-psychiatric follow-up of potentially dangerous people.

Darmanin said the government is introducing new measures and legislation like the bill consolidating respect for the principles of the Republic.

He said the Islamist threat remained very strong and since 2017, there were 14 attacks causing death of 25 people and 36 potential attacks were thwarted. A total of 575 people whose names were listed in the radicalization file, were expelled from France, and around 20 underground schools closed.

In addition, France also faced the threat of the “ultra-right, conspiratorial, survivalist,” he said, detailing that five terrorist plans from such groups were thwarted, three of which targeted places of Muslim culture or worship./aa

Iran on Sunday announced the start of production of a local coronavirus vaccine as it entered Phase 3 of human trials, the semi-official Fars news agency reported.

According to a statement by Mohammad Mokhber, the head of Iran's scientific committee to combat COVID-19, one million doses of the local COV-Iran Barekat vaccine will be delivered to the Iranian Health Ministry within one month.

He said a further 3 to 3.5 million doses of the local vaccine will be produced by June, with production to reach 50 million doses by the end of September.

A second local Iranian vaccine, COV-Pars, entered the human trials phase on Feb. 28 on 133 volunteers, and a second phase of clinical trials will begin in early June with 500 volunteers.

As of Sunday, Iran’s tally of infections surged to nearly 2.38 million, including 69,120 deaths./aa

Allegations that 1.5 million Armenians died in a World War I relocation are untrue and do not fit the facts, according to a Turkish researcher on the subject, rebuffing the “genocide” claims.

Stressing that it was not possible for Turks to kill 1.5 million Armenians in seven months in 1915, author/researcher Mehmet Arif Demirer said: “During World War II, Hitler killed 3 million Jews by establishing six human death camps over the course of four-and-a-half years.”

“With what weapons and ammunition could we have killed 1.5 million Armenians in seven months?” he asked, underlining that at that time of the relocation there were no soldiers in the region, due to battles in Canakkale, on the other side of modern-day Turkey.

He went on to say that there are five documents regarding Armenians who were alive in 1921, including two in US State Department archives, two that are publications of an Armenian-American professor, and one that is a report of the League of Nations.

By looking at these, we can confirm the survival of 1.586 million Armenians, Demirer said.

As many as 486,000 Armenians arrived safely in Syria under the Dispatch and Settlement Law, he said. They started getting help from the American Relief Committee, and the American consul general in Syria wrote a letter to the ambassador in Istanbul on Feb. 8, 1916, he added.

At least 400,000 fled to Russia and sought permission to come back, he said, adding that there were 300,000 Armenians not subject to the Dispatch and Settlement Law and 200,000 Armenians who were Islamized.

“In March 1918, 200,000 Armenians demanded autonomy in Eastern Anatolia. They have certificates. 1.586 million Armenians did not die,” Demirer said.

Russian weapons, supplies left to Armenians

Taking advantage of the fact that almost all of the Turkish army was at war in the west, in Canakkale, the Russian Army entered Van – in present-day eastern Turkey – on May 18, 1915 and took over all of eastern Anatolia, he said.

After the 1917 Russian Revolution, Russian soldiers left behind their weapons and supplies in the lands they occupied, after being told that "the new communist regime would distribute land to everyone,” Demirer added.

These weapons and supplies were left to the Armenians, according to Armenian author Arthur Derounian, who gave this information in a book, he said.

Demirer stressed that there were enough Armenians in eastern Anatolia to take over the occupation from the Russians.

Armenian demands for autonomy in eastern Anatolia and permission for the return of 400,000 Armenians who fled to Russia were not accepted at peace negotiations held in Trabzon, Turkey in 1918 between Ottoman, Georgian, and Armenian delegations, he said.

Citing the 1920 Treaty of Alexandropol (Gyumri Agreement), which laid out a map similar to the border of modern-day Armenia, he said that four months after the pact was signed in December 1920, Armenia was occupied by Bolshevik Russians.

‘Genocide claims are fever swamp’

“On March 18, 1921, Armenia’s prime minister wrote a letter to Mustafa Kemal Pasha, (founder of Republic of Turkey and then-) Turkish parliament speaker, saying, 'Send me soldiers, weapons and ammunition',” Demirer related.

“The (Armenian) Dashnaks – who had decided to betray the Turks seven years earlier, colluded with the enemy, and caused the occupation of eastern Anatolia – then seven years later asked the Turks for help against the Russians.”

Calling the genocide allegations a fever swamp, Demirer said today nearly 2 billion out of the world’s approximately 8 billion people live in predominantly Christian counties.

"We have been unable explain to Christian countries the invalidity of the Christian Armenians’ genocide claims against Muslim Turks. Because of this, 31 countries and the Vatican took decisions against us,” he said.

He stressed that Turkey needs to refute the genocide claims by preparing short, simple, proactive theses, rather than take a defensive position, adding that the use of English and Spanish to communicate is important.

Turkish stance on events of 1915

Turkey's position on the events of 1915 is that the deaths of Armenians in eastern Anatolia took place when some sided with invading Russians and revolted against Ottoman forces. A subsequent relocation of Armenians resulted in numerous casualties.

Turkey objects to the presentation of these incidents as "genocide," describing them as a tragedy in which both sides suffered casualties.

Ankara has repeatedly proposed the creation of a joint commission of historians from Turkey and Armenia as well as international experts to tackle the issue.

In 2014, Recep Tayyip Erdogan – then Turkey's prime minister, now president – expressed condolences to the descendants of Armenians who lost their lives in the events of 1915./aa

Turkish security authorities nabbed 41 people as they were attempting to cross into Syria and Greece illegally, the National Defense Ministry said on Sunday.

The ministry said in a written statement that among them were two people affiliated with the Fetullah Terrorist Organization (FETO), the group behind the 2016 defeated coup in Turkey, the PKK terror group, and a member of a radical terror group, who was hunted internationally with red notice.

FETO and its US-based leader Fetullah Gulen orchestrated the defeated coup of July 15, 2016, in which 251 people were martyred and 2,734 injured.

Ankara also accuses FETO of being behind a long-running campaign to overthrow the state through the infiltration of Turkish institutions, particularly the military, police, and judiciary.

In its more than 35-year terror campaign against Turkey, the PKK – listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the US, and the EU – has been responsible for the deaths of at least 40,000 people, including women, children, and infants./aa