In the aftermath of the suicide attack by ISIS last Monday and subsequent PKK attacks against Turkish security forces including the slaying of two police officers in their homes with silencer guns, Turkey has hit ISIS positions in Syria and PKK targets in northern Iraq.
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The Kurds, however, suspect the Turkish government of colluding with IS – a charge Ankara categorically denies – and in the aftermath of the attack the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) claimed several deadly strikes against police.
It follows last week’s air strikes on PKK camps in northern Iraq, which took place parallel to attacks on suspected Islamic State targets in the region. “Terrorism poses a direct threat to the security of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation countries and to worldwide stability and prosperity”.
Turkey has also opened its air bases to the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State, joining the front-line in the battle against the jihadists after years of reluctance.
Chebli also added that the German Foreign Ministry’s political director would travel to Ankara on Thursday for talks with Turkish counterparts on recent developments in the region, and Turkey’s counter-terrorism operations targeting both PKK and Daesh.
Deputy Prime Minister Yalcin Akdogan, who has overseen the Turkish government’s efforts to settle its conflict with the PKK, accused the HDP of sacrificing the process in the name of its own political ambition. But in an unexpected twist, Turkey simultaneously started shelling Kurdish rebels in Iraq, where Kurds have proven unusually capable of wresting back territory from the Islamic State militants with the help of air support from the U.S.-led coalition.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the AK Party worry that these advances will embolden Turkey’s own Kurdish minority of 14 million and rekindle a three-decade-old conflict with the PKK, deemed a terrorist organization by Turkey, the US and the EU.
“We have to establish democratic pressure that will help silence the guns immediately”.
“The worrying thing has always been the freedom of which groups such as ISIS and their supporters have been able to propagandize and recruit”, Jenkins said.
A Western diplomat, speaking to the Wall Street Journal in February, expressed a similar sentiment: “Turkey is trapped now – it created a monster and doesn’t know how to deal with it”.
“Turkey appears to be engaged in a strategy of hitting two birds with one stone by giving the impression of fighting ISIL while simultaneously starting operations against the PKK”, wrote Lale Kemal, a columnist for Zaman newspaper, using one of the acronyms of the Islamic State group. But it has stopped short of formally pulling out.
Erdogan initiated negotiations in 2012 to try to end the PKK insurgency, largely fought in the predominantly Kurdish southeast and which has killed 40,000 people since 1984.
A woman holds a sign reading “Peace block” after a peace march was banned by authorities in Istanbul, Turkey. Yet, as United States policy makers increasingly rely on Kurdish fighters on the ground in Syria and Iraq in the war against ISIS, a growing number of youth are trading the Kurdish nationalism of their fathers for the vision espoused by radical Jihadist groups in Syria.
In a statement published on Wednesday, the HDP called Erdoğan’s demand to strip parliamentarians of their immunity “a civilian coup” and called on all 550 MPs to volunteer and have their immunities lifted in response.
The HDP won a surprise 13 percent of the vote in a June 7 poll, helping to deprive the AKP, which Erdogan founded, from a majority in parliament for the first time since 2002.
“The HDP has destroyed the trust, has betrayed the peace process”, Akdogan told the state-run Anadolu news agency.
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“It is unclear how the process will continue”.
