Turkish military: 29 Kurdish rebels killed in air strikes

In the neighboring province of Siirt on Wednesday, eight Turkish soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb, the single deadliest strike against the military since the cease-fire collapsed last month.

The Turkish president is waging a war not only against the PKK, but also against the Kurds in Turkey, Syria, and Iraq, he said, adding that the Kurdish fighters in Iraq and Syria are battling against Islamic State, which poses a unsafe threat to minorities.

Turkey has accused the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) of “openly supporting terrorism” by making “written and visual propaganda” of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) during a broadcast on August 20.

Neither the government nor the PKK have called an official end to the peace process, but there are concerns that much of the violence is being perpetrated by youth groups and factions which will be hard to bring back under control.

The blast came just hours after the first Turkish airstrikes on PKK targets along the border with Iraq in about a week. It is not possible to independently verify the figures.

The region of Osmaniye – a stronghold of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and with strong connections to the Turkish military – has lost 6 soldiers in the last 20 days alone, according to Turkish media reports. “They are more symbolic than crippling”, said Cagaptay.

A 20-year-old policeman in the Nusaybin district of Mardin province was shot dead by suspected PKK militants while standing outside his father s house late on Sunday night, the local governor s office said.

Later, security sources said that a customs official and a driver was released.

Its iconic leader Abdullah Ocalan, held on a Turkish island since his extraordinary arrest by Turkish special forces in Kenya 1999, in 2013 declared a cease-fire which has been left in tatters by the current violence.

Turkey launched in July a major military operation against the PKK and ISIS.

“Our fallen warriors will never die”, the crowd chanted with the same mixture of grief, defiance and anger that has marked similar funerals across Turkey’s Kurdish heartland in recent weeks.