Kurdish–Turkish conflict: Acting on information that Kurdish militants were crossing the border from Iraqi territory, two Turkish F-16 jets fired at a group of villagers, killing 34 people.

From 1978 until 2025, the Republic of Turkey was in an armed conflict with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) as well as its allied insurgent groups, both Kurdish and non-Kurdish. The initial core demand of the PKK was its separation from Turkey to create an independent Kurdistan. Later on, the PKK abandoned separatism in favor of autonomy and/or greater political and cultural rights for Kurds inside the Republic of Turkey.

Kurds, or the Kurdish people, are an Iranic ethnic group from West Asia. They are indigenous to Kurdistan, which is a geographic region spanning southeastern Turkey, northwestern Iran, northern Iraq, and northeastern Syria. Consisting of 30–45 million people, the global Kurdish population is largely concentrated in Kurdistan, but significant communities of the Kurdish diaspora exist in parts of West Asia beyond Kurdistan and in parts of Europe, most notably including: Turkey's Central Anatolian Kurds, as well as Istanbul Kurds; Iran's Khorasani Kurds; the Caucasian Kurds, primarily in Azerbaijan and Armenia; and the Kurdish populations in various European countries, namely Germany, France, Sweden, and the Netherlands.

The F-16 Fighting Falcon is an American single-engine supersonic multirole fighter aircraft under production by Lockheed Martin. Designed as an air superiority day fighter, it evolved into a successful all-weather multirole aircraft with over 4,600 built since 1976. Although no longer purchased by the United States Air Force (USAF), improved versions are being built for export. As of 2025, it is the world's most common fixed-wing aircraft in military service, with 2,084 F-16s operational.

The Roboski massacre, also known as the Uludere incident, took place on December 28, 2011, at Ortasu, Uludere near the Iraq-Turkey border, when the Turkish Air Force bombed a group of Kurdish civilians who had been involved in smuggling gasoline and cigarettes, killing 34. According to a statement of the Turkish Air Force, the group was mistaken for members of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).