Ankara says its objective is to fight terrorism overseas and at home – by attacking PKK and IS.
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The airstrikes coincided with nationwide raids inside Turkey and serious confrontations between Kurdish activists and the Turkish police.
Their argument is that IS has been around for well over a year, while Ankara has done nothing.
The Syrian Kurds of the PYD have been accused of neither targeting the Damascus regime nor even allying with it. But one of the important reasons the PYD did not join the anti-Assad opposition is Turkey.
The Suruc bombing on July 20, where over 30 civilians were killed, was the last straw for all involved sides.
The PKK, he asserted, which is based in Iraq’s Kurdish region, “is responsible for the recent unrest that has broken out near the Turkish border“.
A fortnight ago, Turkish air force jets and artillery began a hail of attacks against the PKK, including airstrikes and artillery fire on PKK camps in the Kurdistan Region’s Qandil Mountains. “And we want to see the Turkish government respond proportionately”.
Around 5,000 people, mainly Kurds, marched through the streets in the center of the city on Saturday to voice anger against Ankara’s unabated air assaults against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Iraq. Turkey considers both groups to be terrorist organizations. Turkish authorities agreed to allow the United States to use an airbase to conduct strikes against ISIS.
The US and Turkey also agreed in July 2015 to establish IS-free “safe zones” in northern Syria.
Why don’t they support them anymore? But Turkish media reports said he would meet Kurdish separatist representatives including Zubeyir Aydar, a leading figure in the PKK who is based in Brussels. The US-led coalition has provided air support to the YPG on various fronts. However, as Turkey came under increasing pressure from its Western allies to do more against the jihadists, and after Turkey showcased dozens of potential jihadists detained while crossing the Turkey-Syria border, that deal first cracked, and has now become null and void. Now, new violence means more instability in Turkey, a broken ceasefire, and a potential complication for the regional war against Isis. But that fear is unjustified.
Here, too, however, the US has supported the Turks in their battle against the Kurds, rather than concentrating on fighting the IS.
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From the creation of the modern Turkish state under Kemal Atatürk in 1922, Turkey adopted for its national identity the fiction that it was a unified and homogeneous society, barely acknowledging the existence of its many minorities, and in fact expressing hostility toward them.
