On August 4, 2017, in the town of Dokan near Sulaymaniyah in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) captured two senior Turkish National Intelligence Organization (MIT) officers during a covert operation.
The officers were Erhan Pekçetin, head of MIT’s Department for Ethnic Separatist Activities (responsible for monitoring and countering Kurdish and other separatist groups operating beyond Turkey’s borders), and Aydın Günel, MIT’s human resources executive overseeing domestic and foreign personnel, recruitment, and human intelligence (HUMINT) development. Both were high-ranking officials who had served under then-MIT chief Hakan Fidan (later Turkey’s Foreign Minister).
Turkish intelligence had received reports that senior PKK commander Cemil Bayık, one of the group’s founders and top leaders, planned to visit a hospital in Sulaymaniyah. The MIT team was dispatched on a high-risk mission, reportedly authorized at senior levels including by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, to target, capture, or potentially assassinate high-ranking PKK figures amid Turkey’s long-running counter-insurgency campaign against the PKK, which has fought for Kurdish autonomy since 1984.
The operation backfired. PKK militants ambushed and apprehended the officers in a counter-strike, possibly aided by a tip-off from elements within the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), which controls the Sulaymaniyah area. The PKK’s umbrella group, the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK), quickly claimed responsibility, describing the captives as Turkish spies plotting assassinations in Iraqi Kurdistan.
In the months that followed, the PKK publicly identified the men by name and photo, then released video footage of their interrogations. In the recordings, Pekçetin and Günel reportedly detailed MIT operational methods, including a secret Ankara black site allegedly used for arms transfers and interrogations, as well as links to past incidents such as the 2013 Paris assassinations of three Kurdish activists.
The kidnapping severely strained Turkey’s relations with the PUK-led administration in Sulaymaniyah. Ankara responded by closing the PUK’s office in Turkey and imposing flight restrictions. Turkish media and officials largely remained silent publicly about the loss, reflecting the sensitivity of the failed intelligence mission. The two officers remained in PKK captivity in northern Iraq for nearly eight years until Turkey recovered them in 2025, one alive and one deceased, amid broader political developments involving PKK-Turkey talks.
The 2017 Sulaymaniyah incident underscored the intense intelligence and proxy warfare between Turkey and the PKK in Iraqi Kurdistan, exposing the risks of cross-border operations in a region where PKK presence intersects with Kurdish regional governance. It became a rare public embarrassment for MIT and highlighted the complex, often opaque dynamics of the Turkey-PKK conflict.
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