ISTANBUL,— Turkish war planes launching a wave of new assaults on PKK targets after five more people were killed in attacks blamed on Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants.
Ankara says it is fighting a two-pronged “war on terror” against Islamic State (IS) jihadists in Syria and the PKK in Iraq’s Kurdistan Region, after a spate of attacks in the country.
But after initially targeting the IS group, the campaign has become increasingly focused on the PKK, with the Turkish air force bombing dozens of targets in an almost week-long campaign.
During the afternoon, 30 Turkish F-16 launched one of the heaviest raids yet in Iraqi Kurdistan, hitting positions of the PKK in five locations, Turkish television reported.
The Hurriyet daily said Turkish intelligence sources believed as many as 190 PKK fighters had been killed in the air operations so far and 300 wounded.
But the government declined to give any toll. “This is not a football game but a fight against terrorism,” a Turkish official told AFP.
The strikes have targeted camps and weapons stores used by the military wing of the PKK in the remote mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan, including its headquarters on Qandil mountain. PKK targets inside Turkey’s borders have also been hit.
The crisis erupted on July 20 when 32 Kurdish activists were killed in a suicide bombing blamed on IS jihadists in a town in Turkish Kurdistan close to the Syrian border.
The PKK, who accuse Ankara of collaborating with IS, responded by murdering two Turkish police in their sleep and saying they no longer considered a ceasefire that had largely been observed since 2013 to be valid.
A peace process for a final settlement aiming to end the PKK’s 30-year-plus armed uprising for more rights and powers for Turkish Kurds is now under severe strain.
Since it was established in 1984 the PKK has been fighting the Turkish state, which still denies the constitutional existence of Kurds, with the aim of creating an independent Kurdish state in Turkish Kurdistan region in the southeast of the country.
But now limited its demands to establish an autonomous Kurdish region and more cultural rights for ethnic Kurds, who make up around 22.5 million of the country’s 75-million population but have long been denied basic political and cultural rights, its goal to political autonomy. A large Turkey’s Kurdish community openly sympathise with PKK rebels.
Copyright ©, respective author or news agency, AFP | Agencies | Ekurd.net
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