Protesters wave flags with the picture of Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK)’s jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan during a demonstration against the Turkish army operations on Kurdish militants, in central Brussels, Belgium.
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The ongoing bombing campaign against PKK strongholds in northern Iraq came as a surprise, but it probably shouldn’t have: Turkey has long seen the PKK – a designated terrorist organization that waged a three-decade insurgency inside Turkey – as more of an existential threat than ISIS, which refrained from launching attacks inside Turkey even as its militants lived and operated along the border.
A ceasefire in 2013 paused the conflict, but Turkey said the PKK recently violated the truce, blaming it in the deaths of security officers. In Istanbul, a police officer was killed in clashes after a auto bombing.
“If it gets out of control neither the Turkish state nor the PKK will be able to put it back into the bottle”.
Turkey has also launched airstrikes against the PKK in Iraq, and Daesh in Syria. These Turkmen’s internal division along sectarian line notwithstanding, Turkey has been quick to bring them into focus to not only justify its resolve to deny Kurds an independent state, but also use these people as a new proxy group against them. According to an AFP toll, 31 members of the Turkish security forces have since died in attacks blamed on the PKK.
The string of attacks comes one day after six US F-16s landed at Incirlik airbase in Southeast Turkey along with 300 US military personnel, following the Turks’ agreement to lend their bases to the U.S. after a year of resisting American requests, the report added.
Meanwhile, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevult Cavusoglu said that Turkey did not expect to deploy ground forces in Syria to fight ISIL but that option should remain on the table. This deployment coincides with Turkey’s decision to host U.S. aircraft to conduct operations to counter the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL.
Recent attacks by the so-called Islamic State and the Kurdish militant group PKK has the country on edge.
“The Turks… would not welcome an emboldened Kurdish force on its southern border”.
“Under Saddam there were many nights we had to abandon our homes and go to the mountains for fear of Iraqi bombardments”, Hamina says.
A senior defense official told Fox News that another reason the Turks want to keep Kurdish fighters outside of the 68-mile border is to prevent the Kurds from potentially selling their oil on the open market from ports along the Mediterranean.
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A Boeing KC-135 tanker touches down in Turkey 10 August carrying supplies for the newly arrived F-16 group.
