The Turkish military said jets hit 17 targets of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, around the Buzul mountain and the Ikiyaka region in Hakkari province, which borders Iran and Iraq, and later also targeted two anti-aircraft guns in the neighboring province of Sirnak, along the Iraqi border.
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The PKK has been fighting for Kurdish autonomy in southeast Turkey.
Turkish warplanes overnight staged a fresh wave of attacks on Kurdish militant targets following a day of bloody attacks that killed six members of the security forces.
Two attackers opened fire outside the U.S. consulate building in Turkey’s biggest city, Istanbul, on Monday and then fled after police shot back, broadcaster CNN Turk said, adding there were no casualties.
The attacks come as Turkey takes a more active role in the fight against ISIS, launching air strikes against the militants in Syria and letting the US use Turkish air bases to launch its own attacks. The group on Tuesday claimed responsibility for bombing the police station and a subsequent attack on police officers inspecting the scene, according to the pro-Kurdish Firat news agency, which is close to the rebels. “The current military campaign against the Islamic State and the PKK may burnish his nationalist credentials among Turkish voters and enable the ruling AKP to reclaim its simple parliamentary majority”.
“We will continue our fight until weapons are laid down… and not one single terrorist remains within our borders”, Erdogan said in a televised speech in Ankara. He declined to comment on any specific security measures being taken. The PKK assumed the complicity of Erdogan’s AK party (AKP) in the bombing and the next day claimed the retaliatory murders of two policemen in Urfa (the claim was later retracted without explanation); in response, Ankara launched hundreds of air strikes against PKK targets in Northern Iraq. At least 48 people have died during the renewed violence that has wrecked an already fragile peace process with the Kurds.
“Turkey’s air campaign damages the PKK, but is not sufficient to destroy it”, said Pinar Elman, Turkey analyst at the Polish Institute of global Affairs (PISM).
Erdogan also declared the peace process to end the PKK insurgency was now “on ice”.
In the past three weeks, some 70 security officials and civilians have been killed in attacks by Islamic State and the PKK. “For both, the price of their war is potentially higher than ever”, she said in a briefing note.
President Barak Obama strongly insinuated last week that Ankara was overstretching the terms of the Incirlik deal, which is largely assumed to consist of Turkey’s granting its air bases in return for the U.S. curbing its support to the Kurds.
Erdogan said “effective operations” were carried out against IS extremists, saying the group also posed a threat to Turkish security.
Washington has long been pushing its North Atlantic Treaty Organisation ally Turkey to step up the fight against IS and Ankara’s involvement in the coalition has been seen as a game-changing moment in the fight against IS.
“For us, there is no difference between terrorist organisations”.
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“We do not make any distinction between terrorist organizations; they are terror organizations for us regardless of their name, purpose, symbol or discourse”, Erdogan said.
