The Turkish air force launched Tuesday a string of overnight air strikes against Kurdish militants in the southeast of the country.
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Four suspected militants of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) were “rendered inactive” in the aftermath of an attack on a gendarmerie base in Turkey’s southeastern Sirnak province on Wednesday night, the Turkish military said Thursday.
On Monday, nine individuals, including five cops, were killed in independent assaults in Istanbul and in the southeastern Sirnak territory which were faulted for the PKK.
Turkey’s pro-Kurdish opposition group HDP has accused Erdogan of ordering the attacks in the wake of the PKK’s strong performance in the June 7 parliamentary elections.
According to an AFP toll, 30 members of the security forces have been killed in violence linked to the PKK since the crisis began last month.
Negotiators said afterwards that the meeting had been positive and a new meeting, which could prove decisive, is expected later in the week. It threatened further action, declaring, “Our struggle will continue until imperialism and its collaborators leave our country and every parcel of our homeland is cleared of US bases”.
Soon after the terrorist PKK militants attacked to Halil Durmaz military post with rockets and mortars, the security precautions were increased around the Yüksekova. Washington launched the offensive under the pretext of fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), its former ally, which has seized vast swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria, cutting across US interests in the region.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who as prime minister pursued talks to end the three-decade Kurdish conflict, now says the PKK poses as great a threat to Turkey as Islamic State.
Ankara’s core policy shift has been an exchange: joining the war on ISIL that includes opening airbases in Incirlik and Diyarbakir in return for permission to wage a parallel war against the PKK and the West halting support for the Kurds at large, the writer said. Now, seemingly retaliatory attacks have popped up in different areas around Turkey, including one outside the U.S. consulate in Istanbul that the DHKP-C claimed responsibility for.
The state-run Anatolia news agency reported over the weekend that 390 “terrorists” had been killed so far in the campaign against the PKK.
“The police warned her again: “Drop your bag or we will have to shoot you”, and the woman said: “Shoot”. Elsewhere across Turkey, at least eight people were killed and a dozen injured in a series of incidents aimed at security and police officials.
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Picking up on a recent visit to Brussels by Demirtas, Erdogan said: “The party [HDP] that is controlled by a terrorist organization is looking for a solution in Brussels”.
