The Turkish foreign minister, Mevlüt Çavusoğlu, said on Wednesday a “comprehensive battle” would be launched against Islamic State with the arrival of US aircraft and drones.
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Turkish authorities say military bases also came under PKK attack in the neighbouring Hakkari province.
However, there is considerable suspicion Turkey’s air attacks are based more on Erdogan’s determination to use the newly aroused tension with the Kurds to create a groundswell of support for Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) which lost its parliamentary majority during the April 7 general election but which wants to regain full power again if a new coalition government can not be agreed upon within 45 days, necessitating new elections. The arrest of Abdullah Ocalan, the charismatic PKK leader in 1999, had already demoralized many PKK fighters.
Turkey’s covert relationship with the IS, which has captured larges swaths of land in Syria and Iraq since last summer and declared an Islamic Sharia caliphate in the lands it controls, can be described by words ranging from “clandestine support” to “distant Islamist comradeship”, and from “malign neglect” to “defensive caution”. This was largely due to anger over the government’s inaction during the siege of the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobane.
EU Enlargement Commissioner Johannes Hahn has acknowledged Turkey’s commitment to fight Daesh, but also expressed concern over tensions between the Turkish army and the outlawed Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK).
Violence has flared between Turkish troops and PKK fighters after 32 pro-Kurdish activists were killed last month in a town close to the Syrian border.
Bremmer added that the fights with both ISIS and the Kurdish PKK “could easily expand and become more intense, and you could see a more concerted push for independence from Kurds inside Turkey, Iraq, and Syria”.
Ankara is waging a two-pronged cross-border “anti-terror” bombing campaign against Isis militants in Syria and PKK rebels in northern Iraq, but so far the raids have overwhelmingly targeted the Kurdish rebels.
The United States is sending armed missions into Syria from Turkey for the first time, despite an unresolved dispute between Washington and Ankara about the rules for U.S. warplanes attacking targets in Syria from Turkish airbases.
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The PKK confirmed Monday the attack was carried out by one of its guerrillas with the nom de guerre of Andok Eris. While Turkey has its larger strategic vision of defeating Bashar al Assad’s government, and weakening Iran’s influence in the region, what threatens it more, is the formation of a Kurdish independent region in northern Iraq and north-eastern Syria. If Turkey does not stop attacking the Kurds right now, the dormant Kurdish fighters are most likely to retaliate against Turkey.
