Military presses ahead with strikes against PKK in northern Iraq

One of the PKK fighters was also reported killed in the fighting, and Turkish forces are conducting searches in the surrounding area trying to locate the rest.

A peace process for a final settlement aiming to end the PKK’s 30-year-plus armed uprising for more rights and powers for Turkish Kurds is now under severe strain.

The Turkish foreign ministry said on Friday that the Iraqi government’s “negative attitude” towards Turkey’s air strikes on Kurdish militant camps in northern Iraq was disappointing and hard to accept.

The only North Atlantic Treaty Organisation member-state with strong links to the Islamic world Turkey has won the unequivocal support from the 28 member-state alliance at their emergency meeting in Brussels, which endorsed Ankara’s move as a part of the global war on terror.

Suspected PKK gunmen fired on police headquarters in the city of Pozanti, sparking clashes which left two police as well as two militants dead, the Anatolia news agency said. The choice got here after a suicide bombing blamed on IS killed 32 individuals and militants fired on Turkish troops, killing a soldier.

The PKK has not reported rebel casualties.

But the sheer numbers of planes involved in the daily strikes on the PKK targets in northern Iraq has given an idea of the scale of the operation and raised concern in some Western capitals.

The PKK, which seeks to gain self-rule, has been engaged in militancy in southeastern Turkey for decades.

“The dialogue – sluggish because it was – should resume”, Selahattin Demirtas stated in televised feedback. “Fingers must be removed from the trigger”.

The army meanwhile issued a statement to express its thanks after “many” Turkish citizens applied to join the armed forces to “fight terrorism”. Davutoglu’s Justice and Development lost its parliamentary majority in June and has until August. 24 to form a coalition government, otherwise new elections will be called.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Europe on Friday of not doing enough to help refugees fleeing conflict in Syria and Iraq, suggesting it was responsible for people “drowning in the sea”.