Iraqi Kurdistan president tells PKK to ‘withdraw from Iraq amid Turkish airstrikes

The governor’s office for Agri province says Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, militants attacked a military police station with an agricultural vehicle laden with explosives early Sunday.

There is also growing controversy over possible civilian casualties in the Turkish bombings, and the local Kurdish authorities in northern Iraq on Saturday urged the PKK to spare civilians.

“For the peace and security of our people, the fight against terror organisations will continue without interruption”, the office of Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said in a statement.

Within Turkey, at least 14 police and soldiers have been killed in attacks blamed on the PKK in the last 10 days in an escalating cycle of violence.

The decision by Turkey to launch airstrikes against Islamic State positions in Syria as well as to allow the US to use its bases for its missions against IS is an important (and long overdue) development in this war.

The effect of the bombing campaign – which has seen daily raids by dozens of Turkish F-16s on the PKK’s holdouts in remote mountain territory in northern Iraq – remains unclear.

In response, President Massoud Barzani, head of the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region in Iraq, called on the PKK to withdraw from the north of the country so as to ensure civilians would not be hurt.

Turkey said Saturday it had launched an investigation into the reported civilian deaths.

Turkey has also conducted air raids against ISIL and the PKK in Syria and Iraq.

AFP said it would be the first time the PKK was accused of deploying a suicide bomber during recent clashes.

Iraq’s oil pipeline to Turkey is expected to resume pumping on Tuesday, Turkish energy officials have told Reuters, after sabotage by Kurdish militants halted crude flow last week.

Upon the beginning of airstrikes targeting the PKK by the Turkish government, which perceives the group as among its most formidable enemies, Barzani blamed the PKK for prompting the air campaign by being “arrogant” and hurting the peace process between the group and the Turkish government. Turkey’s decision to lump ISIS together with Kurdish forces who bitterly oppose the jihadist group has surprised some Western allies, but North Atlantic Treaty Organisation this week united behind the alliance’s only Muslim member.

“The message we hear from the jets is: ‘We are in your heart and we will destroy your heart and your freedoms, ‘” said Adnan Seyit, who runs a cafe overlooking the Tigris river in Diyarbakir.

The far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), which is opposed to the peace process with the PKK, has openly called for the HDP to be shuttered. On the one hand, it envisioned using them to create a ‘geopolitical Israel’ in the heart of the Mideast, but on the other, it knew that such an effort would tempt Turkey to conventionally intervene and put an end to these plans (which could also derail its potential Eurasian pivot).