Legitimacy of cross-border military operations conducted by the Turkish Armed Forces within the scope of the fight against terrorism

When the United Nations Charter and other sources of international law are examined, it is seen that the rules regarding the use of force are based on states, and in this context, they prohibit states from using force against each other, but they do not regulate the use of force in the fight against terrorist organizations, which is one of the biggest obstacles to the establishment of international peace and security today. For this reason, the right of states to use force outside their borders in the fight against terrorism has taken its place among the most controversial issues of international law. The use of force outside their borders by states that are subject to terrorist attacks during peacetime against states that protect or support terrorist organizations, are incapable or unwilling, unsuccessful or collapsed in the fight against terrorist organizations, and other armed groups, stands out as one of the most successful methods to achieve results in the fight against terrorism. Turkey, which has been exposed to ongoing armed attacks by terrorist organizations in northern Iraq and Syria for a long time, has carried out cross-border operations against Iraq and Syria, which are the source of the attacks, within the scope of the right of self-defense stipulated in Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, as a reaction to these attacks. With these operations, Turkey has targeted not Iraq and Syria, but the terrorist organizations nested in these countries. This study consists of three parts. The first part examines the right to use force outside the country's borders against international terrorism. In line with the legal framework drawn in the first part regarding the use of force within the scope of the fight against international terrorism; the cross-border military operations conducted by the Turkish Armed Forces against terrorist organizations in northern Iraq since the 1980s are examined in the second part, and the cross-border military operations conducted against terrorist organizations in northern Syria since 2015 are examined in the third part.