Meanwhile in Turkey, Kurdish militants launched attacks on military outposts in the east of the country overnight and seven of their fighters were killed in ensuing clashes with security forces, the Turkish armed forces said.
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In ground fighting, security sources said the PKK attacked a military station in Sirnak, a province adjacent to Hakkari, and killed one soldier in a 20 minute battle.
The outlawed Marxist Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front, which the government has on occasion linked to the PKK, claimed an attack in Istanbul – a shooting at the US consulate, which caused no casualties.
In response, Turkey began bombing PKK camps alongside airstrikes on Islamic State (IS) militants in Syria. Although the new cycle of violence is a replay of the same dumb conflict, Turkey, much like inAlbert Einstein’s definition, expects different results.
The group “undertook the job of arming in towns and cities” as security forces used a peace process from late 2012 to build fortified outposts and strategic highways, according to Mehmet Kaya, head of the Tigris Communal Research Center in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for either of the attacks, but U.S. diplomatic missions and police stations have been targeted by far-left groups in Turkey in the past.
Negotiators said afterwards that the meeting had been positive and a new meeting, which could prove decisive, is expected later in the week.
Also, as noted, a deal of some sort was reached last fall between ISIS and Turkish officials. The PKK accuses Turkey of recently joining the fight against the Islamic State to counter Kurdish control along the border with Syria and exclude Kurds from gaining a voice in Turkey’s democracy.
U.S. President Barack Obama and Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan attend the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation Summit at the Celtic Manor Resort in Newport, Wales September 5, 2014.
“Turkey sees the Kurds, and specifically the PKK, as an existential threat”, she says. But Turkey’s decisions, seemingly blessed by the U.S., are marginalizing the PKK – creating another enemy that resources have to be diverted towards and ultimately jeopardizing the coalition’s goal of eliminating ISIS.
Fighting the PKK at the same time as ISIS is not only insane, it is also detrimental to the interests of Turkey and the United States.
The recent PKK attacks appeared to rattle a delicate cease-fire that brought relative calm to Turkey over the last two years after the Turkish government launched the “solution process” in 2013 when Erdogan was prime minister.
The report follows testimony from one Peshmerga fighter, who tells The Telegraph he left his hometown to fight the Islamic State in an attempt to save his family from the Islamist terror group’s wrath, only to come home and find Turkish planes had bombed his town out of existence and killed his family.
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The state-run Anatolia news agency reported over the weekend that so far 390 “terrorists” had been killed in the campaign against the PKK.
