Turkey launches airstrikes against PKK

But in an unexpected twist, Turkey simultaneously started shelling Kurdish rebels in Iraq, where Kurds have proved unusually capable of wresting back territory from the Islamic State militants with the help of air support from the U.S.-led coalition.

The Hurriyet daily said Turkish intelligence sources believed as many as 190 PKK fighters had been killed in the air operations and 300 wounded.

Turkey’s air strikes on Kurdish and ISIL positions came after rising violence inside its own territory, including a series of attacks by ISIL and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) on civilian and state targets.

Violence has flared in the region in the past week, with Turkey launching raids against PKK positions in northern Iraq and southeast Turkey, and the rebels escalating attacks against Turkey’s security forces.

The Times article also reported that “American officials said they would need to arrange the same kind of system for calling in airstrikes that American Special Operations forces have worked out successfully with Kurdish fighters to the east in Syria”, which sounds like Libya, where US forces were on the ground, aiding the Libyan rebels. Sunni Muslims make up the vast majority, but there is a sizeable Shiite population, particularly in Iran.

Michael Stephens, head of the British Royal United Services Institute’s (RUSI) centre in Qatar, said the priority for Turkey’s North Atlantic Treaty Organisation allies was hitting Islamic State militants. They also say that while a de facto safe zone could be a byproduct of the plan, a formal no-fly zone is not part of the deal. He is a deeply conservative Sunni Muslim who shares the widespread Sunni belief that Shia Muslims are not just heretics, but heretics whose power is a growing threat.

The PKK has fought a three-decade war, initially for independence and later for autonomy and greater rights for Kurds.

The use of Incirlik by U.S. forces, especially in conflicts with Turkey’s neighbors, is always a sensitive subject for Ankara, and Turkish governments are very careful about wording terms of its use. The talks were made public in 2013 and the PKK declared a cease-fire a few months later.

Ankara says it is fighting a two-pronged “war on terror” against Islamic State (IS) jihadists in Syria and the PKK in northern Iraq, after a spate of attacks in the country.

Turkey launched the strikes in the wake of a terrorist bomb attack in the border town of Suruc, which claimed the lives of 32 people. Kurdish groups held the Turkish government responsible, saying it had not been aggressive in battling the Islamic State group. It called on the government to end the bombing campaign and resume a dialogue with the Kurds.

“That would sort of dissolve the alliance, the coalition against ISIS, and certainly do nothing to strengthen the larger opposition cohesion that we’d love to see form in general”, Ricciardone stated. Therefore, as argued in a new Chatham House paper, Turkey will play a major role in determining the future of the Kurds and their campaigns in Syria.

In the predominantly Kurdish city of Kobani, for example, the retreating militants laid mines and booby traps wherever they could – going as far as to stuff explosives inside dead bodies.

Turkish officials have said the aim in Syria is to push Islamic State away from the border and their operations will not target Syrian Kurdish groups.

Such is the total-war jumble of the conflicts in both Iraq and Syria that the sudden entry of Turkey into the action can be seen as both a positive development as well as yet another spiral into even more destruction.

Turkey’s abrupt shift to a two-front war against Islamic State militants and Kurdish separatists has plunged the country into a period of uncertainty, exacerbating political turmoil at home while raising fears of violent domestic unrest. Turkish government said it was fighting IS, but said it’s preparing this stretch of land to be an IS-free area that will enable Turkey to return some 1.7 million Syrian refugees in Turkey to this safe, protected area, which means cutting the road before the Kurds can take them.

So far the Turkish offensive against “terrorism” has been directed primarily against the PKK Kurdish guerrillas in the mountains of northern Iraq rather than Isis in Syria.