Ultranationalist protesters attacked on Tuesday the headquarters of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) in Ankara and local offices across the country.
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The 16 soldiers were killed in a similar attack by PKK on Sunday.
Prosecutors in Diyarbakir, the region’s largest city, launched investigations into Demirtas on Wednesday on charges of terrorist propaganda and insulting the president, requesting that his parliamentary immunity be lifted.
The current Kurdish conflict in Turkey flared up in July after a suicide bombing in Suruc, that was blamed on ISIS.
Turkey’s mainstream pro-Kurdish party warned on Thursday that the country was “increasingly drifting into a civil war”, voicing concern over escalating violence between the state and the armed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
Clashes between the Turkish army and the PKK have been intensified since July, claiming dozens of the lives of security personnel. Fourteen police officers were killed while others were wounded in the attack.
On Monday, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu promised not to let up in the battle against the Kurdish rebels, who’ve been fighting for autonomy in southeastern Turkey.
Turkey deployed ground forces across the border into northern Iraq on September 8 for the first time since 2011 to pursue Kurdish militants involved in attacks that killed 31 Turkish police in recent days.
The renewed conflict, weeks before polls the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) hopes will restore its majority, has shattered a peace process launched by Erdoğan in 2012 in an attempt to end an insurgency that has killed more than 40,000 people over three decades.
Khalil Mohamed, governor of the region’s Zakho district, said in a statement that 115 of the district’s 184 villages were “no longer accessible” due to the establishment of PKK camps.
The campaign drew cautions from the United States and European Union, which said that while Turkey had the right to defend itself, it should show restraint and pursue a “proportionate” response.
Cizre, near Turkey’s borders with Syria and Iraq, has become a flashpoint in two months of deepening violence in the mainly Kurdish southeast.
The Igdir attack came as police travelled in a minibus to a border gate linking Turkey to the autonomous Nakhchivan enclave, sandwiched between Armenia and Iran and controlled by Azerbaijan, the Dogan news agency reported.
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The PKK, known for sometimes exaggerating the death tolls of its attacks, said 31 Turkish soldiers had been killed in Sunday’s gun and bomb attack in Daglica.
