Turkey’s state-run news agency says Turkish jets have raided suspected Kurdish rebel targets across the border in northern Iraq, following a wave of attacks that killed at least 12 people.
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Turkish jets destroyed PKK terrorist targets in northern Iraq, a military source said Thursday.
Backed by a helicopter, counter-terror squads raided HDP offices in the central Istanbul district of Beyoglu at 3 a.m. (0000 GMT) as armoured vehicles and a water cannon vehicle were deployed nearby, the Dogan news agency reported.
The cross-border raid and police operation came a day after four Turkish soldiers were killed near the border with Iraq in attacks targeting military vehicles and eight other people died in southeast Turkey in simultaneous bomb attacks targeting police vehicles. Turkey and its allies consider the group a terror organization.
Turkish media reports that PKK leader Cemil Nayik threatened attacks against Turkish police earlier this week. A ceasefire was broken a year ago, with attacks between the government and PKK leaving hundreds dead.
Wednesday’s bomb attacks, in the southeast’s largest city Diyarbakir and in the Kiziltepe area of Mardin province, were condemned by the HDP in a statement on Wednesday evening.
“We repeat our call for the bloodshed and violence to be halted immediately and for steps to be taken to solve our problems by talking and negotiations”, it said.
The HDP, parliament’s third-biggest party, denies direct links with the PKK and advocates for a negotiated end to the Kurdish conflict, which has claimed hundreds of lives since a peace process, once led by Erdogan and the AK party, collapsed in 2015.
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Turkey, the United States and the European Union call the PKK, an armed group that has been fighting for Kurdish autonomy since 1984, a “terrorist organisation”.
