“Military means are not sufficient to finish off the PKK”, Pinar Elman, a Turkey analyst, Polish Institute of global Affairs (PISM) told The Media Line.
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The PKK claimed responsibility for Monday’s suicide bombing and a subsequent armed attack on a police station in the Sultanbeyli district of Istanbul.
“The American consulate at Istinye was struck by people’s warrior Hatice Asik”, the group said, labelling the United States as “chief enemy of people in the Middle East and in the world”. “This is what the society wants”, Demirtas said.
The PKK has retaliated by carrying out daily attacks in Turkey on the security forces, in an escalating cycle of violence.
Turkish police officers work at the site of an explosion at a police station, seen right, in Istanbul’s Sultanbeyli neighborhood, early Monday, August 10, 2015.
Shoot-outs between Turkish and PKK forces also ensued throughout the night.
Ankara has also vowed to begin strikes in the next days against IS jihadists in Syria alongside US forces who have now started arriving to use the well-located Incirlik air base in southern Turkey.
However the overwhelming majority of those arrested so far have been from the PKK.
Ankara looks unlikely to concede.
“Ultimately, the group has not done what Ocalan wanted”.
There are significant Kurdish minorities in Iraq and Syria and well, with some Kurds saying there should be a Kurdish state carved out of territory from all three countries. Their visits had been the only known way for the militant leader to communicate with the guerrillas.
But even such an intense campaign may not be enough to finish the PKK. Reviving peace efforts hinged on reviving Ocalan’s ability to negotiate, he said. “Islamic State does not have a military presence in Turkey, although it does have sympathizers”.
Kurdish Y.P.G. fighters check maps as they coordinate an airstrike on an Islamic State position in Hasaka. The group has roots in Marxist and Leninist schools of thought.
“The Turkish security services have cut off Ocalan”.
There are between 15 and 20 million Kurds among Turkey’s population of 80 million, and many of them have long advocated for an independent separate state.
While neither side has an interest in a return to all-out war, nor do they have much incentive for an immediate truce. The blast set in motion a new cycle of violence. Erdogan, meanwhile, has political ambitions on his mind. Turkey remains without a governing coalition and if elections were called today, the AKP would regain its majority according to Turkish pollster MAK. “ISIS is more active in Syria, and is therefore less urgent now”. Now Mr. Erdogan is linking the outlawed PKK to the upstart People’s Democratic Party (HDP), which won 13 percent of the vote and thwarted his plans to create a more powerful presidency, as The Christian Science Monitor reported last month in an analysis of Erdogan’s power play.
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In the southeast of the country a roadside bomb killed four police, and Kurdish rebels attacked a helicopter, killing a conscript.
