HDP chairman Selahattin Demirtas said Turkey’s operation against IS militants across the border was a cover to target PKK Kurdish rebels.
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While Western allies have said they recognize Turkey’s right to self-defense, they have urged it not allow years of peace efforts with the PKK to collapse.
But in a series of cross-border strikes, Turkey also has targeted Kurdish fighters affiliated with forces battling IS in Syria and Iraq.
The PKK has said the air strikes, launched virtually in parallel with strikes against Islamic State fighters in Syria, rendered the peace process meaningless but stopped short of formally pulling out.
Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan has signalled a crackdown on Kurdish nationalists. “The main objective is to prevent the formation of a Kurdish entity in northern Syria“.
Kurdistan Workers’ Party spokesman Bakhtyar Dogan said the airstrikes lasted for three hours and caused “a lot of damage”.
“Turkey increasingly realized that if it was not willing to do more in terms of fighting ISIS, might be detrimental to Turkey’s national interest in geopolitical terms”, Ulgen said, using another name for the Islamist group.
“The only way for the AKP to be in government on its own is if the HDP is liquidated”.
“HDP passing the threshold and the AK Party losing its parliamentary majority are being used as a pretext for war”.
In the latest unrest in the southeastern province of Mardin, police and protesters clashed around the town of Nusaybin on the Syrian border when PKK supporters blocked a road and threw Molotov cocktails at security forces, Turkish media reports said.
The German foreign ministry has warned about possible attacks on Istanbul’s underground rail network and bus stops in the wake of Turkey’s assault on Kurdish armed groups in northern Iraq.
“He (Demirtas) is a person whose elder brother has obviously been raised in the mountains”, said Erdogan, referring to the PKK’s Iraq bases. Michael Stephens, head of the British Royal United Services Institute’s (RUSI) centre in Qatar, said the priority for Turkey’s North Atlantic Treaty Organisation allies was hitting Islamic State militants.
The PYD’s desire to clear Daesh from the region was “really a fundamental principle to U.S. and also to Turkey”, according the officials. The U.S said Monday it would use newly available airbases in Turkey to keep aiding the Kurds.
The timing of Turkey’s attacks on Kurdish militants – immediately after opening its air bases to the U.S. – has fueled suspicions of a deal with Washington, but the White House has denied any role. The Syrian Kurds have been among the most effective ground forces in the fight against the extremist group and have been backed by U.S.-led airstrikes, but Turkey fears a revival of the Kurdish insurgency in pursuit of an independent state.
The YPG could then move further west and eventually link up the Kobani and Afrin “cantons”, zones in northern and northeastern Syria that are under Kurdish control. The “safe zone” would be a much smaller space, but it could be expanded if Turkey and the Obama administration choose to do so.
In addition, since the bombing in Suruc, a number of Turkish policemen and soldiers have been killed in attacks attributed by Turkish media and government to the PKK.
Erdoğan said the peace process, launched in 2012 in order to put an end to the bloody conflict between the Turkish government and the PKK that has killed over 40,000 since it began in 1984, had become impossible to maintain.
The rebels have attacked a major oil pipeline from Iraq, Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yildiz said Wednesday, a day after they also attacked a gas pipeline from Iran. But he said it was too early to declare the peace process over and the PKK should respect any call for a truce.
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The second reason, he went on, is that Turkey wants to be “part of reshaping Syria in the post-Assad regime”, and, thirdly, Ankara seeks to attack the PKK.
