According to an AFP toll, 20 members of the Turkish security forces have since died in attacks blamed on the PKK.
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Turkey last month launched a two-pronged “anti-terror” offensive against Islamic State (IS) jihadists in Syria and PKK militants after a wave of attacks inside the country.
“At first glance, Turkey’s bombardments of the PKK are more a diversion from the war against Isis than a detriment [to it]”, said Dov Friedman, an independent Turkey and Kurdistan analyst, adding “Yet, at a fundamental level, Turkey’s bombings are destabilising to the region”. It has launched scores of strikes on PKK strongholds across the border in northern Iraq and detained hundreds at home.
Turkey was the spoiler in 2003, when the US was in an extreme flush of war-lust preparing for the invasion of Iraq.
An emergency North Atlantic Treaty Organisation meeting in Brussels Tuesday offered political support for Turkey’s campaigns in Syria and Iraq, and Erdogan signaled his country may have a “duty” to become more involved. In an interview with CNN this week, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said the strikes targeted the PKK, not the Kurds in general, in a “combined fight against… any type of terrorist activity”.
Mustafa said the Kurdistan Regional Government was already struggling to assist refugees fleeing the so-called Islamic State group, and that new fighting between Turkey and the PKK would not help.
Neither the location of the footage nor the identity of the handcuffed suspects was clear, but the the website of the Turkish daily said the alleged officer’s rhetoric is similar to that of “nationalists” addressing Kurdish “separatists”.
The poorest areas in Turkey’s southeast have been the most fertile recruiting grounds for ISIS, experts said.
On Friday, heavy clashes took place between Turkish army forces and fighters of the PKK in the southern city of Silopi in Şırnak province. Ankara has also allowed the U.S.-led coalition targeting the IS militants to use its air bases.
The HDP has played an important role in the peace process with regular visits to PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan in his jail on Imrali island south of Istanbul.
“Turkey has joined the war on ISIS!” heralded U.S. politicians and their news media at the end of July.
Demirtas’ HDP won 13 percent of the vote in a June 7 parliamentary election. Although the PKK camps are located on the Iraqi Kurdish side of the Qandil mountains, the party has refused since the beginning of the peace process to disclose the hideouts of its weapons or to withdraw its units that are spread across the Kurdish population majority regions of Turkey.
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PKK fighters also fired rockets at a military outpost in the Bulanik district of Mus province, triggering a brief gunfight, security sources said.
