Turkish fighter jets hit PKK targets in southeast

Turkey has seen a sharp spike in clashes between security forces and rebels of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, in the a wake of its campaign against PKK targets in Iraq in tandem with airstrikes against Islamic State militants in Syria.

Turkey has for the last couple of weeks hit targets of the PKK in its strongholds in the remote mountains of northern Iraq and south-eastern Turkey.

The strikes come a day after nine people were killed in a wave of attacks on security forces, some of them in the south-east.

Well, the DHKP-C is a far-leftist group that has claimed responsibility in the past for attacks on U.S. interests.

The Revolutionary People’s Liberation Front (DHKP-H) stated on its web site that certainly one of its feminine militants carried out Monday’s attack, which left no reported casualties.

Overnight, Kurdish rebels attacked a military post in Sirnak, killing a Turkish soldier.

The attacks are the latest in an escalating cycle of violence between Turkish security forces and Kurdish rebels that has left a 2013 ceasefire agreed by the PKK in tatters.

According to a French judicial source, the charge against the main suspect in the case, 33-year-old Ömer Güney, will be “assassination in connection with a terrorist organisation”, as requested by an investigating magistrate in July.

Given the history of animosity between the PKK and Turkey, it seems as though these moves are designed to provoke sentiments that will translate into more votes for Mr Erdogan’s AKP if early parliamentary elections are called.

“We will continue our fight against terrorist organizations until the guns aimed at our state and citizens are laid down and buried”, said Erdogan, Anadolu agency reports. The PKK is affiliated with, but separate from, Syrian Kurdish fighters allied with the United States in its fight against the Islamic State group.

On the other side of Istanbul, a vehicle laden with explosives was used in an attack on a police station, injuring three police officers and seven civilians, police said.

Meanwhle, Turkish police has launched anti-terrorist operations against the youth movement of PKK on Tuesday in the western and southern parts of the country.

“Turkey’s air campaign damages the PKK, but is not sufficient to destroy it”, said Pinar Elman, Turkey analyst at the Polish Institute of global Affairs (PISM).

And providing the US access to Incirlik gives the Turks more freedom to strike the Kurds in Iraq, which they began doing right after announcing the agreement with the US.

Some 40,000 have been killed since 1984, when the armed group launched its first attack.