With Turkey still without a permanent government as coalition talks drag on, Erdogan said early elections should be called “immediately” if the negotiations fail.
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About four years ago, the government of then Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan set out to remove the Assad regime in Syria.
The president’s office denies the charge.
Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region urged Turkey on Friday to halt its air strikes against PKK guerrilla bases on its territory and called for a negotiated settlement to the conflict, AFP reports.
BEIRUT// Turkey’s formal entry into Syria’s war and its renewed attacks on the militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has alarmed Syrian Kurds battling ISIL, already wary of Ankara trying to undo their recent territorial gains.
The prosecutor will also demand Demirtaş’s legislative immunity be lifted, if the probe concludes that the crimes stated in the charges were indeed committed. Tensions across the country are high, with police routinely using water cannon to disperse nightly protests in Istanbul and other cities denouncing IS and the government’s policies on Syria.
The Turkish government firmly supports China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, opposes terrorism activities – such as the East Turkestan Islamic Movement – that target China, and will protect the relationship from being “distracted”, Erdogan said. “And now the Turks come”, sighs Dikhri, taking little comfort from the fact that Turkey’s actions are directed against the PKK and not Iraqi Kurds.
His position is made all the more complicated by the fact that his own elder brother Nurettin is known to have joined the PKK rebels at their headquarters on Kandil mountain in northern Iraq.
Turkish intelligence sources, cited by Hurriyet newspaper on Thursday, said they believe as many as 190 PKK fighters have been killed – and 300 wounded – in airstrikes.
One senior western official said that direct dealings between Turkish officials and ranking Isis members was now “undeniable”.
He added: “As the people of Turkey, we should say, ‘Remove your hands from the trigger, solve this issue at the table.'”.
The left-wing HDP gained traction after Demirtas campaigned on a progressive platform that took the party beyond its origins in Kurdish nationalism, appealing to a broader range of minorities and opponents of the Islamist-rooted AKP.
“Because most of its leadership comes from parties that were banned”, she said.
“HDP passing the threshold and the AK Party losing its parliamentary majority are being used as a pretext for war”.
His party won 13 percent of the vote and for the first time managed to attract large numbers of non-Kurdish Turkish voters with its message of sexual equality, gay rights, secularism and socialist economics.
The PKK is reportedly striking back.
While so far Turkey has shown less aggression towards the PYD, the Kurds accuse Ankara of aiding Syrian rebel groups to fight them. Street violence, leaving dozens dead, erupted in Turkey last year between Kurdish Islamists and supporters of the People’s Protection Units (YPG) militia when the Islamic State group layed siege to Kobane, a Kurdish enclave in north Syria.
He dismissed opposition allegations that the abrupt launching of attacks on IS and the PKK are linked to domestic politics or electoral calculations.
A suicide bombing in the southeastern Turkish town of Suruc – carried out on July 20 by a suspected ISIS-affiliated student – killed 32 young activists who had been calling on Ankara to help rebuild the Syrian border town of Kobani, which was retaken by Kurdish forces from ISIS in January but was attacked again by the militants in late June.
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Erdoğan said last month he would “never allow” a Kurdish state to be declared on Turkey’s border, let alone one that includes his own country’s Kurds.
