There is no indication Turkey consulted with the Shiite government of Baghdad before engaging in the current airstrikes, which have been targeting the north of the country largely populated by Yazidis and Kurds.
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“Turkey is not waging war against IS but against the Kurdish people“, said Zubeyir Aydar of the Kurdish National Congress.
It was only the fifth time in NATO’s 66-year history that a member state called for an emergency session, invoking Article 4 of the alliance’s founding treaty to tackle a perceived threat to the state’s security or territorial integrity. But recent attacks blamed on Islamic State inside Turkey drew alarm from Turkey’s government, leading to its decision to step up its role in Obama’s coalition.
Suspicions are swirling that Erdogan’s sudden embrace of the US-led campaign against IS in Syria and Iraq simply provides the cover to pound Kurdish rebels, viewed in the West as a bulwark against the jihadists.
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”. A separatist group, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, known as the PKK, fought a 30-year insurgency there that ended in a fragile cease-fire two years ago, and Kurdish politicians now make up an important opposition bloc in the Turkish parliament. “As the United States and Turkey enhance our cooperation against ISIL, we believe these mutual efforts will be most effective in collaboration with local forces on the ground, including the Kurds”.
DIYARBAKIR, Turkey (AP) Just when it seemed Turkey was getting serious about the fight against IS, it has turned its military focus to pounding its old foe: the Kurdish rebels.
Faced with a growing number of attacks in recent weeks both by religious extremist ISIL group and the left-wing extremist PKK, Turkey begun on Friday comprehensive air raids to suspected terrorist camps in northern Iraq and northern Syria.
“I said forcefully that in any peace process there had to be restraint, and that the peace process with the Kurds in Turkey should not be disturbed nor abandoned”, von der Leyen said during a trip to Mali.
Ankara, which along with its Western allies considers the PKK a terrorist organisation, launched peace negotiations with the group’s jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan in late 2012 but the two sides have yet to reach an accord.
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. Davutoglu’s Justice and Development lost its parliamentary majority in the June 7 elections after Mayor Kisanak’s pro-Kurdish HDP party made huge gains, and passed a 10 percent minimum vote threshold to be represented in parliament.
Erdogan appeared to take aim at that faction, the People’s Democratic Party, or HDP, on Tuesday.
Mr Erdogan said on Tuesday that it was “not possible” to carry on with a peace process in the face of current attacks by the PKK.
“Was it the United States that supported Turkey or was it Turkey that supported the efforts of the United States in the struggle against the Islamic state?”
Ever since the blast in Suruc, the country has also started conducting aerial attacks against PKK bases in northern Iraq as well as what it claims to be ISIL positions in Syria.
But analysts say unless there is a clear agreement on the use of Incirlik, the potential for disputes will remain, warning that Ankara in the past is very skillful in manipulating its use to secure its objectives. Turkish jets again hit PKK targets inside and outside Turkey on Sunday night and on Tuesday.
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Still, Turkey was wary of the growing autonomy on its southern border.
