“He can’t take a stand against the PKK, which is recognized as a terrorist organization by Europe and the United States”, Erdogan told reporters in China, when asked about Demirtas, whose brother Nurettin was imprisoned in the past and fought alongside Kurdish forces in the mountains of Iraq. The Uyghurs are ethnically a Turkic people and seen by many Turkish nationalists as kin.
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Some of the attackers who were able to escape the police have started searching the militants.
This shameful reality will not only prove disastrous for the humanitarian situation in the region, but will be a major blow against progress, democracy, and any hope of defeating the Islamic State.
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has said Turkey’s onslaught against the PKK will continue until its fighters lay down arms, despite calls from Turkey’s main pro-Kurdish political party for the resumption of peace efforts a plea the party’s co-chairman renewed on Thursday.
Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) rebels have bombed a railway line in Turkey’s eastern province of Kars and then fired at fix workers, killing one, the BBC reported.
A missile-loaded Turkish Air Force warplane rises in the sky after taking off from Incirlik Air Base, in Adana, Turkey, Wednesday, July 29, 2015.
The raids have also struck Kurdish militants in Iraq. It led to protests from Washington and Europe – both already wary of Turkey’s 900-mile border with Syria being used as a gateway by would-be jihadis from around the world.
But for Turkey, bad blood with the Kurds trumps strategic alliance against ISIS.
In Beijing, talks between Erdogan and his Chinese counterpart will focus on bilateral trade, which is now worth about $24 billion, according to official figures.
These developments prompted Mr. Erdogan to become engaged in the battle against IS.
“I am optimistic about the future of bilateral relations”, said Fidan, who is now a visiting research scholar at Princeton University in the US.
Turkey is without a full time government even as it presses cross-border military operations against jihadists in Syria and Kurdish militants in northern Iraq.
Erdogan initiated negotiations in 2012 to try to end the PKK’s fight for an autonomous state.
Official plans of a Turkish invasion emerged soon after, with Erdogan declaring, “We will never allow a state to be established in northern Syria and in the south of our country”. The military said the soldier later died, at least the fourth member of the security forces to be killed over the past week.
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After sending groups of Uighurs to Turkey in recent years, Thailand was trying to appease China, accepting claims the recent group had a history of terrorism, said Veerawit Tianchainan, executive director of the Thai Committee for Refugees Foundation.
