A senior official told Reuters it was the biggest assault since the campaign started.
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Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said Tuesday that his council of ministers views Turkish airstrikes in his country as “a risky escalation and a violation of Iraq’s sovereignty“.
Some 30 F-16 fighters jets hit the PKK hideouts in Zap, Metina and Hafta regions in northern Iraq, while Turkish army launched operations against the group’s positions in Turkey’s Sirnak province, a military source said.
“Was it the United States that supported Turkey or was it Turkey that supported the efforts of the United States in the struggle against the Islamic state?” Germany warned on Wednesday about possible attacks on Istanbul’s underground rail network and bus stops. North Atlantic Treaty Organisation gave Turkey full political support on Tuesday.
Both Turkey and the U.S. label the PKK a terrorist organization because of its history of targeting civilians.
In the days after reaching an agreement with the United States to combat mayhem in Syria and Iraq, Turkey said it had vaulted itself into the battle against extremists menacing Turkish security.
“We have to establish democratic pressure that will help silence the guns immediately”.
“If the PKK really wants it, it (can) calm down the youth, (who are) really raging after the events”, he said, urging the militant group to encourage political rather than armed action.
In the latest unrest in the southeastern province of Mardin, police and protesters clashed around the town of Nusaybin on the Syrian border when PKK supporters blocked a road and threw Molotov cocktails at security forces, Turkish media reports said.
Massud Barzani, the president of northern Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region, has expressed disquiet to Ankara over the air raids.
Rasul Abdullah Faqi, a father of seven from Inzi, a village at the foot of the Qandil mountains affected by the strikes, said the population lived in fear of more air raids.
In a dizzying array of alliances, Obama has been pleading with Turkey for almost a year to fight the Islamic State more aggressively and allow the U.S. military to launch airstrikes from its Incirlik air base.
Erdogan initiated negotiations in 2012 to try to end the PKK insurgency, largely fought in the predominantly Kurdish southeast and which has killed 40,000 people since 1984.
The parties appeared to be inching towards a final peace deal after a ceasefire was agreed on 2013.
Turkey’s new airstrikes last week against the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS, ISIL or Daesh, came alongside an equally intense barrage on Kurdish fighters in Iraq – whose Syrian affiliates are also fighting the Islamic State group.
Erdogan said on Tuesday he was against closing the HDP but that lawmakers linked with the PKK must be stripped of their immunity and face prosecution.
However, the recent military operations against Kurdish positions in Turkey, Iraq and Syria has raised suspicions that Turkey’s greater priority is to undermine Kurdish movements for greater autonomy rather than tackle the Islamic State group. Davutoglu’s Justice and Development lost its parliamentary majority in the June 7 elections after Mayor Kisanak’s pro-Kurdish HDP party made huge gains, and passed a 10 per cent minimum vote threshold to be represented in parliament.
“The HDP has destroyed the trust, has betrayed the peace process”, Akdogan told the state-run Anadolu news agency, but stopped short of declaring it definitively over. “This is a process and this process will continue with the same determination”.
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That no coalition government has been formed since the election has resulted in no clear victor, raising the chance for a possible early election.
