NATO’s second-largest army is currently pursuing a clandestine war of occupation in Iraqi Kurdistan. After forty years of conflict with the militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which espouses a unique ideology based on devolved, women-led direct democracy, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has sworn a final war against the group this summer.

The region’s mountains have long proved a stronghold for Kurdish militants, particularly since the PKK withdrew its forces into Iraqi Kurdistan following a 2013 cease-fire agreement with Turkey. But those peace talks collapsed — and the retreat brought no respite, as Turkey has pursued the PKK with air strikes often launched hundreds of miles from Turkish soil.

The latest operation is Turkey’s deadliest Iraqi venture in the twenty-first century, with technological advances creating a sea change in the war. In an unprecedented escalation ongoing since April, hundreds of civilian villages have been emptied as Turkish warplanes pound the region. Turkey has penetrated ten miles deep into Iraqi territory, establishing over seventy bases and operating its own checkpoints in what for the first time appears as a de facto occupation.