adminTurkish fighter jets have carried out air raids against 17 positions of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the country’s southeast, the Turkish army says. “Seventeen targets of the separatist terrorists were hit with precision and neutralised” in the province of Hakkari near the border with Iran and Iraq, the army said yesterday.
The raids were seemingly conducted in retaliation for a series of attacks in Turkey on Monday that claimed the lives of six members of the security forces. Turkish officials blamed PKK militants for the assaults.
Also yesterday, the Turkish military said in a statement that a soldier was killed in a PKK attack on the Akdizin base in Sirnak Province.
Ankara launched airstrikes against purported ISIL targets in Syria as well as PKK positions in Iraq and Turkey after a deadly July 20 bomb attack attributed to ISIL terrorists left 32 people dead in the southeastern Turkish town of Suruc, across the border from the northern Syrian town of Kobani.
But, so far, the air raids have significantly concentrated on the Kurdish militants and killed at least 390 of them.
Turkish police also launched a far-and-wide arrest campaign following the Suruc bombing. More than 1,300 suspects have been detained by Turkish security forces for their alleged cooperation with the PKK. However, figures from the Turkish government show that only around one-tenth of those detained had links with ISIL, while the rest were Kurds.
On August 6, Selahattin Demirtas, the co-chair of Turkey’s pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party denounced as nothing more than a “show” Turkey’s alleged anti-terror police raids and its military campaign against ISIL Takfiris in Syria.
Demirtas accused Ankara of using purported anti-ISIL airstrikes as a “cover” to bomb PKK positions.
Ankara has been among the main supporters of Takfiri terrorists wreaking havoc on Syria since March 2011. The violence has reportedly claimed more than 230,000 lives up until now.
There are reports indicating that the Turkish government actively trains and arms the militants operating in Syria, and also facilitates the safe passage of would-be foreign terrorists into the crisis-stricken Arab country.
The PKK has been fighting for an autonomous Kurdish region in southeastern Turkey since the 1980s. A shaky ceasefire between Anakara and the PKK that had stood since 2013 was declared null and void by the militants following the Turkish airstrikes against the group. — Aljazeera
Online Reporter