Kurdish rebels fire at police in Turkey; 1 officer killed

The BBC’s Beijing correspondent says Turkey’s current border crisis may also give renewed impetus to its plans to buy a Chinese long-range missile system. On Monday, Syria’s main Kurdish militia and an activist group said Turkish troops shelled a Syrian village near the border, targeting Kurdish fighters.

In response, the militants attacked a military headquarters used by the NSF, claiming to kill five fighters and calling on the group to “return to the right path” of focusing attacks against forces loyal to President Assad, rather than Islamic State.

Almost 400 members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) have been killed and hundreds injured in two weeks of Turkish airstrikes on positions in northern Iraq, the official Anatolia news agency reported on Sunday. He has considerable influence among the party’s grassroots Kurdish supporters, most of whom are sympathetic to the PKK.

Erdogan has said a “safe zone” created by pushing out Islamic State could allow 1.7 million refugees in Turkey to start going home. A total of 142 have been charged so far, while 120 were released.

The Turkish military launched an air campaign against PKK camps in northern Iraq on July 24 after a resurgence of militant attacks. Those visits were halted before the June parliamentary election and the government has indicated they will not be permitted to resume.

Some 5,000 people demonstrators gathered in the centre of the city, police said, with organisers hoping that more of the region’s substantial Kurdish and Turkish populations more would join them later.

Selahattin Demirtas, co-chairman of the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party, called for the peace process to resume.

Opponents have accused President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of using the war against ISIS as a cover for preventing Kurdish gains, pointing out the airstrikes against the PKK have so far been heavier than those against the Islamist radicals.

Despite ISIS’s efforts to brand itself as a normal, fully functioning caliphate as covered by this recent HNGN article, the global community has taken yet another decisive step against the militant group, with Turkey officially agreeing to host active fighters against the Islamic State.

Two people were killed in clashes between police and Kurdish militants in a town in southeastern Turkey on Friday, local sources said, and clashes were continuing, with smoke rising from buildings and shots ringing out.