Turkey requested the extraordinary meeting to gauge the threat the Islamic State extremist group poses to the country, and the actions Turkish authorities are taking in response, including attacks on Kurdish rebels. After Turkey started bombing the positions of the “Islamic state” and the PKK, Washington said that Turkey had a right to struggle against terrorists.
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Senator Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., warned in a statement that a conflict between Turkey and the Kurds would only benefit the Islamic State and President Assad and plunge the region into “chaos”. “The main objective is to prevent the formation of a Kurdish entity in northern Syria“.
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.
A government spokeswoman said that there is “known instability” and the risk of possible escalation in Turkey.
“The only way for the AKP to be in government on its own is if the HDP is liquidated”.
These fears appear to have been strengthened by Mr Erdogan’s decision to rule out any dialogue with ethnic Kurd movements as “impossible”, and by his threat that any Turkish lawmaker who may have “links to terrorist groups” may be stripped of their parliamentary immunity and prosecuted.
The Turkish green light came at a time when the US is planning to expand its military footprint in Turkey with more personnel and combat aircraft.
Having put in motion a plan to diminish the Kurdish military capacity in Syria, Erdogan could now turn his attention to the Kurds in Turkey, beginning with invalidating the peaceful “settlement talks” between the PKK and the Government. “In comparison, we’ve had probably around about 140 air sorties against the PKK in northern Iraq and the number may even be higher”. ISIS has captured large swaths of land in Syria and Iraq, both neighboring Turkey, since last summer.
Turkey and the United States have signed a deal to open the former’s Incirlik air base to the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group, the Turkish foreign ministry said Wednesday, according to Reuters.
But the move will also ensure that territory remains out of the hands of the PYD, preventing Syria’s Kurds from joining up areas under their control into what could otherwise become a strip of Kurdish land running from the Iraqi border nearly to the Mediterranean.
The PKK and the US have found themselves on the same side not only in Syria. “Jarablus is the only obstacle for this unity”, Demirtas said, referring to a Syrian town on the edge of the proposed “safe zone”.
However, Washington seems conservative about attacking Syrian Kurds, as the Kurdish YPG forces have so far played an effective role in the war on IS in northern Syria.
Five people died Thursday in new attacks on the Turkish security forces blamed on Kurdish militants, as Ankara stepped up its controversial campaign against the separatist rebels.
In 2012 Erdogan launched negotiations to try to end a PKK insurgency that has killed 40,000 people since 1984. But a ceasefire the PKK declared in 2013 had largely held, though there had been warnings the peace process had stalled and tensions were growing in Kurdish parts of the country. “Turkey is planning to stop YPG/PKK expansion in Syria by creating a safe haven and supporting rebel groups in the Aleppo countryside, and bombing the PKK in Qandil mountains is a warning to the PKK”, Jamestown Foundation analyst Wladimir van Wilgenburg said on Wednesday.
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The air strikes are believed to the first on Kurdish militants inside Turkey since a 2011 botched raid by F-16 jets that killed 34 civilians, mainly cigarette smugglers.
