PKK leader says Turkey protects IS by attacking Kurdish fighters

Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants attacked a military outpost and a police vehicle in southeast Turkey overnight, killing a policeman, officials and security sources said on Sunday, in further violence jeopardising a fragile peace process.

At least five people were killed on Friday in clashes between Turkish security forces and PKK supporters in the southeastern town of Silopi.

On the surface, the shift in Turkish policy is a reaction to a suicide attack July 20 in the Syrian border town of Suruc that killed 32 people and wounded 100, along with the success of Syria’s Kurds in pushing back the Islamic State along the Turkish border.

“The member states are fully aware that the Turkish priority is an attack on the Kurds – to be more specific, the prevention of a contiguous Kurdish entity in northern Syria”, Seckin told AFP.

There were also reports of clashes in south-eastern Turkey between the army and the armed group, as a 2-year-old peace process falters, sparking concern at home and around the region.

What disturbs Turkey the most is the newly-established relationship between Washington and Kurdish forces in Syria, who have proven to be one of the most effective fighting forces on the ground in relation to the war on IS. Turkey began an air campaign against PKK camps in northern Iraq on July 24. We are not for a Kurdish state. “Or is it aiming to hit the Kurds in Syria and Iraq, maybe for other internal reasons?”

For those us familiar with Turkey’s repressive, vague and draconian anti-terrorism legislation, these acts come as little surprise. The Turkish prime minister’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

He said negotiations were the “only choice” to end the Kurdish conflict. “Specifically, it’s allowing them to raise the pressure on the PKK”. It was relatively risk-free, since Turkey was then in a state of ceasefire with its own Kurdish guerillas.

The recent violence has effectively ended a two-year-old ceasefire between Ankara and the PKK that had brought relative calm to Turkey following three decades of conflict.

The HDP won a surprise 13 percent of the vote in a June 7 poll, helping to deprive the AKP, which Erdogan founded, from a majority in parliament for the first time since 2002.

Security forces also carried out early-morning raids in Ankara at locations police said were linked to the PKK.

Erdogan – whose relations with his Western allies have been bedevilled by human rights concerns – insisted Ankara would press its attacks to the full and said he considered peace talks with the PKK dead in the water.

On a violent day, Turkish fighter jets pounded rebels from the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK after soldiers were fired on with heavy weaponry in Sirnak province, according to a military statement.