This presents a strategic challenge for Washington, which is providing air and logistical support to the PKK’s Syrian affiliate.
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Senior PKK figure Cemil Bayik told the BBC in an interview on Monday that Turkey was trying to protect the IS by fighting the PKK, who are bitterly opposed to the Jihadists.
The escalation in violence over the past three weeks has rattled investors.
The unrest comes as Turkish politicians struggle to form a government after inconclusive elections in June.
Turkey’s Foreign Ministry condemned the attack and said security at U.S. missions around the country had been increased.
Police identified the consulate attacker as a member of the far-left Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C).
Erdogan also said Turkey made no distinctions between terror groups, in an apparent response to claims that the government had concentrated efforts on battling the PKK, shifting away from combatting ISIS.
The second assailant apparently managed to escape despite a police dragnet in the area, on the European side of the Bosporus waterway, which divides Turkey’s largest city.
Four police officers were killed when their armored vehicle was hit by roadside explosives in the town of Silopi, the governor’s office in the province of Sirnak said. There were several people killed in subsequent firefight. Since ISIL militants carried out a suicide bombing in the southern Turkish city of Suruc, killing 33 civilians, Ankara has been on a war footing.
The PKK formed in the 1970s and began combating the Turkish government in 1984, demanding an independent Kurdish state within Turkey. Turkish authorities accused Marxist and Kurdish radicals of being responsible for the attacks. That unleashed a wave of attacks throughout Turkey’s southeast.
In a wide-ranging interview with the BBC’s Jeremy Bowen, Mr Davutoglu called on the worldwide community to do more to resolve the four-year conflict in Syria and denied that Turkey had helped so-called Islamic State and other extremist groups.
The organization claimed responsibility for a suicide attack in 2013 on the U.S. Embassy in the capital of Ankara that killed a security guard who was Turkish.
Meanwhile, in a separate incident, one Turkish soldier was killed when Kurdish militants attacked a military helicopter with rocket launchers as it was transporting personnel in Sirnak’s Beytussebap district, the Dogan news agency said. “Neither the Turkish state nor PKK can win by military means”.
One of the two women was later captured wounded, the Istanbul governor’s office said.
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Al Jazeera’s Bernard Smith, reporting from Istanbul, said the woman was chased down a back street near the consulate, and had screamed: “I did it for my party”, before being shot and wounded by police. A Twitter account believed to be managed by a group called the People’s Defense Union (Halkların Savunması Birliği) claimed responsibility for the attack on Monday.
