The Fragility of Peace: Turkish military expansion and limited positive outcomes for displaced villages

The Fragility of Peace: Turkish military expansion and limited positive outcomes for displaced villages

Community Peacemaker Teams, which has monitored cross-border attacks in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq for years, reports that Turkish forces resumed shelling villages in Sidakan and Duhok in early 2026 after nearly six months of calm during the peace talks with the PKK. Even without bombardment, it finds, Turkey has kept building: in Amedi, new roads now link several bases, and new compounds with a hospital, training centre and artillery positions are creating a buffer zone, at the cost of explosives, heavy deforestation and damage to historic sites such as the Abbasid-era Dushaw bridge.

CPT counts at least 1,192 villages affected by Turkish operations, 183 of them fully emptied and 602 partly displaced. In 2025 it recorded 1,718 bombardments and attacks, most of them after the March 2025 ceasefire, killing nine civilians. Hundreds of villages first emptied during the Anfal and the ISIS war still cannot be returned to, and only a handful have regained access.

The report ends with villagers blocking a road to demand to go home before the harvest, and calls on both Turkey and the PKK to take concrete steps for peace and withdraw from civilian areas.

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