As Turkey keeps up attacks against Kurdish rebels in their stronghold in the Qandil Mountains straddling Iran and Iraq, the plight of Turkish soldiers, intelligence operatives and various other Turkish citizens being held by the militants has received scant attention and there is growing worry among their families they might get caught in the middle.

Rights groups have urged the opposition to highlight their plight ahead of critical presidential and parliamentary elections on June 24. Critics charge that Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan launched the latest wave of airstrikes on Qandil to garner nationalist support in the polls. “We are bombing Qandil. And in a few days we will have auspicious news for you,” Erdogan said at a campaign rally on June 15, prompting speculation that either a senior Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) figure would be captured or killed, or the hostages freed.

“There are easily dozens of such captives in the hands of the PKK,” said Ozturk Turkdogan, the president of Turkey’s Human Rights association who liaises with the rebels and the government on their families’ behalf. “We contacted all the opposition leaders urging them to say something and got no response,” he told Al-Monitor. Turkdogan speculated they are ignoring the issue for fear that Turkey’s hawkish president would use it against them. “Erdogan could easily accuse them of trying to sabotage the Qandil operation and of supporting terrorists.”

Erdogan has already leveled similar accusations against Muharrem Ince, his pro-secular opposition rival who has emerged as something of a potential nemesis according to recent opinion polls. Erdogan called Ince a “terrorist flunky” after Ince visited Selahattin Demirtas, the imprisoned presidential contender running for the largest pro-Kurdish bloc. “He is leaning on murderers with bloodstained hands for support,” Erdogan declared at a campaign rally in the mainly Kurdish province of Van on June 19.