Iraq considers Turkish airstrikes on PKK as violation of country’s sovereignty

Turkey’s air raids against the Kurdish rebels, which came at the same time as Turkey began cracking down on the Islamic State group, are reigniting a 30-year conflict with the insurgents and leave a two-year-old, fragile peace process in pieces. But their advance across northeastern Syria in recent months has alarmed Ankara, which fears they could revive a decades-long insurgency in pursuit of statehood. Despite the pressure and strong criticism, this was not a pressing matter for President Erdgoan, especially if ISIS could reduce or eliminate Kurdish forces in Syria.

Senior US State Department officials said Ankara had promised not to go after Syrian Kurdish militias, who have been among the best partners on the ground for the US-led anti-ISIL coalition. An agreement was reached between the U.S. and Turkey to establish a safe zone in Syria along the Turkish border. Sunni Muslims make up the vast majority, but there is a sizeable Shiite population, particularly in Iran.

However, North Atlantic Treaty Organisation diplomats speaking privately to reporters in Brussels indicated that Turkey had been quietly admonished for reported attacks on Kurdish forces in Syria and Iraq. People will continue to die, civilians will be murdered. Most are Sunni Muslim.

Over the years, the PKK’s demands have evolved from outright independence along Marxist-Leninist lines to autonomy, with cultural and language rights.

On Friday, Turkey launched airstrikes on the PKK bases in Iraqi Kurdistan, putting in jeopardy a two-year ceasefire with the group amid peace negotiations.

Turkey’s allies know it is playing a double game with its twin onslaught against Kurdish rebels and the Islamic State group, but are turning a blind eye to keep NATO’s only Muslim member on side, analysts said.

The Turkish government announced last week that it would, for the first time, engage in airstrikes against the Islamic State in Syria, following a suicide bombing in the border town of Suruç that left 32 dead, mostly Kurds organizing to help rebuild the battered border town of Kobani, Syria, which lies across the border from Suruç.

“To be perfectly frank, I think Turkey is using the campaign against ISIS to go after the Kurds“, says Gareth Jenkins, an Istanbul-based researcher with the Silk Road Studies Program at Johns Hopkins University.

President Barack Obama’s stepped-up partnership with Turkey in fighting the Islamic State may come at the cost of alienating another key group he’s counting on for help in the same conflict: the Kurds. Everyone should justify their own actions. They have pushed back the militants in Iraq and Syria.

The left-wing HDP gained traction after Demirtas campaigned on a progressive platform that took the party beyond its origins in Kurdish nationalism, appealing to a broader range of minorities and opponents of the Islamist-rooted AKP.

Turkey’s assaults on the PKK have so far been much heavier than its strikes against Islamic State, fuelling Kurdish suspicions that its real agenda is keeping Kurdish political and territorial ambitions in check, something the government denies. Although Turkey began shelling Islamic State and Kurdish targets on the same day, the administration insists there’s no connection. More than 30 people were killed.

“IS is always a murky issue and Turkey has played a less than transparent game”, while most of Europe considers that the PKK is a terrorist group but “the conundrum is not easily resolved”, Lesser added. Selahattin Demirtas, co-chairman of the Turkish Kurds’ main political party, said Turkey’s prime minister was “step by step taking Turkey toward a war”. The PKK’s Syrian affiliate, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), continues to defeat ISIS in Rojava.

“This is a network structure that can easily do without profoundly controlled territories”.

Stoltenberg defended Nato’s limited role in the fight against Islamic State, arguing that the alliance was already active in combating terrorism across the Mediterranean, in Afghanistan, in Jordan and Iraq as part of a US-led coalition.