Also, the law on the two parliamentary terms, which prohibited the AKP candidates from standing as MPs more than twice, had been cancelled.
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After the Ankara bombing, Obama contacted not any representative of the bombing victims, but Erdoğan himself, and promised that Washington would “stand with Turkey and its people in the fight against terrorism and other security challenges in the region”. The Turkish army is already shelling the Syrian Kurds, and warning that it may invade if the Syrian Kurdish proto-state (known as Rojava) tries to push further west and shut down the last border-crossing point that links Turkey to Islamic State. It also now threatens to suck Turkey deeper into the war in neighboring Syria.
But lately, Erdogan has indulged his authoritarian instincts.
Neither side ultimately halted fighting. He pledged to continue operations against the PKK until every last insurgent was “liquidated”.
The government has refused to resurrect peace talks, with Deputy Prime Minister Yalcin Akdogan saying Tuesday conditions were not yet ripe. The PKK has renewed its armed campaign against Turkish forces following the Suruc arrack, effectively bringing the process to a standstill.
“If democratic politics is of importance, then weapons must be laid down”. It is designated a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and European Union.
One Turkish policeman was also killed in clashes with PKK fighters on Thursday in Silvan, another southeastern town, where a curfew was declared this week, security sources told AFP.
The two journalists rejected the accusations during their questioning, Hurriyet Daily News reported. Erdoğan, who has been in power in Turkey for a decade now – most recently as president of the republic, but previously as prime minister – has treated this set of parliamentary elections, with the original round taking place back in June, as a referendum on his plans for what he calls a “New Turkey”. Much like Vladimir Putin from 2008 to 2012, while he no longer occupies the throne, he wants to be the power behind it. A crackdown on people with alleged links to his enemy Fethullah Gulen shortly after the election showed the way things are continuing to go in Erdogan’s Turkey and since the AKP’s victory he has reiterated his desire to rewrite the constitution. After losing a few of those seats in the November 1 vote, the party may be softening its position.
Earlier in the day, his spokesman suggested the country could hold a referendum, asking people if they supported his push to change the country’s political system, if the party failed to win the support of opposition leaders. “You can’t have red lines”. He and the PKK were rewarded with a wave of support from a war-weary population-including votes from Kurdish areas that added to the AKP totals in 2007 and 2011. The temptation is to tar all Kurds with the brush of separatist ambitions, a policy that will antagonize a potentially powerful force for stability within Turkey.
Ankara had unleashed a new air war against PKK rebels after renewed militant violence in July, destroying a 2013 truce and hopes of fresh talks to end a conflict that has claimed 45,000 lives since 1984.
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This made intuitive sense; they represent mutually hostile outlooks (Islamist, leftist, Kurdish, nationalist), making substantial movement between them in under five months highly unlikely.
