Turkey’s operations not against Kurds, PM says

“Despite our official announcement that we are not part of what is happening…the Turkish military monitors and targets our units”, the group said in a statement posted to their website.

When it was announced that the US and Turkey were going to unite against ISIS, there was an immediate announcement of talks underway to establish a “safe zone” in northern Syria, along the Turkish border.

Turkey’s involvement in the war, then, will starve the USof both ground forces and intelligence in their fight against IS in Syria.

Demirtas’s blunt comments may raise worries in Turkey that Erdogan, as he counterattacks, might seek to ban the HDP as an alleged supporter of the outlawed PKK.

The Revolutionary People’s Liberation Army-Front (DHKP-C), considered a terrorist organisation by the United States and Turkey, said one of its members was involved, and called Washington the “arch enemy” of the people of the Middle East and the world.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday vowed that his government would press on with its relentless campaign against Kurdish militants, saying the operations were not “temporary”.

The uncertainty comes as the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation member faces an nearly unprecedented confluence of national security threats, battling Islamic State insurgents on its borders and Kurdish militants at home.

As a matter of fact, it was the very Kurdish success against the ISIS that has turned out to be Turkey’s primary motivation for targeting them, forcing Erdoğan to say that Turkey “will never allow the establishment of a new state on our southern frontier in the north of Syria“.

A Turkish man suspected of murdering three Kurdish activists in Paris in 2013 is to face trial, putting the spotlight on a key rallying point for ethnic Kurds amid renewed violence in Turkey’s Kurdish southeast.

The US launched its first manned air strikes against ISIL targets from Turkish territory on Wednesday, the US military said.

The source also claimed that Washington made its objections clear and that the coalition Air Force officers in the ops center refused to share the sensitive information.

The attacks are the latest in a recent surge of violence between Turkish security forces and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) group that has undermined a near three-year-old peace process.

Demirtas repeated his past criticism of attacks by the PKK and said that the group’s imprisoned leader, Abdullah Ocalan, “is ready to resume all the existing peace talks” that were broken off earlier this year.

He referred to Demirtas as a composer that leads the PKK orchestra.