The injured included 75 officers and three civilians, Anadolu reported. In addition to the PKK’s attacks, the country has also had to defend itself from those orchestrated by the Islamic State coming from neighboring Syria.
The conflict in Turkey is one of the factors that may still delay the country’s membership into the European Union, one which they have been trying to secure for years.
More than 1,700 military personnel have been removed for their alleged role in the putsch, including some 40 percent of admirals and generals, raising concern about the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation member’s ability to protect itself as it battles Islamic State in Syria and Kurdish militants at home. Earlier this week, Turkish tanks entered northern Syria to help Syrian rebels clear ISIS from a border town.
Cizre is in Sirnak, a province that borders both Syria and Iraq and has a largely Kurdish population.
In a statement on the website of the PKK’s military wing, the militant group said the Cizre attack was in retaliation to jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan’s “isolation” on his prison island off Istanbul.
“There is no question that our fight with terror will succeed”, he said.
The bombing in the town of Cizre was the latest in a series of attacks since a ceasefire with the PKK collapsed more than a year ago, and comes as Turkey tries to recover from a failed July 15 military coup. Hundreds of security force members, militants and even civilians have been killed since.
The PKK also said it was behind an attack yesterday in the northeastern province of Artvin on a convoy carrying the leader of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) Kemal Kilicdaroglu.
The armed wing of the the PKK – a militant Kurdish group that’s labeled a terror group by many in the worldwide community – took credit Friday for the attack. It comes a week after a suicide attack against the Kurdish community during a wedding in the neighbor city of Gaziantep, where 54 people were killed, a lot of them children.
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The country is still recovering from , which government believes was influenced by US -based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen.
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