Kurdish rebels attack Turkish government lodgings

The worry is that Turkey’s growing involvement in the Syria war could suck the United States and the Europeans into a wider regional quagmire and that Ankara’s real targets are the Kurds. Cavusoglu said, adding that the Turkish government was still in favor of finding a solution and continuing the solution process, but “this does not mean that we will tolerate terrorist acts that disrupt public order”. The U.S said Monday it would use newly available airbases in Turkey to keep aiding the Kurds.

“PKK is defending the humanity with their lives, Kurds have paid a lot and this is how the world thank us”, Silevani wrote.

He urged both Turkey and the PKK to return to the peace process.

But the White House has rejected claims that Obama agreed to look the other way to secure Turkey’s help against IS. Although Turkey denies it ever abetted the Caliphate-which controls swaths of the desert between Aleppo in the northwest of Syria, Mosul in the north of Iraq and Ramadi to the south, near Baghdad-it allowed weapons and foreign fighters to cross the border from 2012 to 2014, hoping this would put pressure on the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

“I understand the coincidence of all of this, but it is just that”, said State Department spokesman John Kirby.

The PKK, considered a terror organization by Turkey and its western allies, launched its armed campaign for autonomy in Turkey’s southeast in 1984.

Demirtas, whose party has been a facilitator in negotiations, said Davutoglu’s calls to the PKK to lay down its arms and leave the country were “one-sided and impossible to achieve”.

But Turkey isn’t drawing any such distinction. From Friday into Saturday, the military hit positions of both the Kurdistan Workers Party in Iraq and Islamic State forces in Syria. To Turkey, such a safe zone would further the aim of toppling Assad and prevent Kurds from establishing a contiguous state. Already the PKK has declared the end of its cease-fire with Turkey, raising the specter of yet another complex conflict in a region the U.S. and its coalition partners are working to calm.

Elsewhere, a Turkish soldier died after he was shot in the head by a Kurdish militant near the border with Iraq, Turkey said.

Erdogan was taking Turkey to war in revenge, Demirtas said, seeking to discredit the Kurdish movement ahead of a possible repeat election. “In comparison, we’ve had probably around about 140 air sorties against the PKK in northern Iraq and the number may even be higher”. Despite U.S. training, Iraq’s military has been slow to take the advantage.

For his part, Rami Abdul-Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights watchdog group, said that “the interference of the Turks will stop any progress of the Kurds and will halt the Kurdish attempts to connect areas of Kurdish influence with one another”.

The timing of Ankara’s about-face on ISIS engagement, however, has raised questions over whether defeating the extremists was merely a pretext to advance Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s political agenda.

The United States distanced itself from the airstrikes against the PKK this week.

Differences have emerged between Washington and Ankara over how to use a Turkish air base near the Syrian border in the fight against Islamic State militants. “Turkey always had plans to attack the Kurds, and now sees it as the best time to do so”, said former party chief Fuad Omer.

The original intention was to train some 5,000 Syrian opposition fighters a year.