(MENAFN- Arab Times) Turkish jets struck camps belonging to Kurdish militants in northern Iraq, authorities said Saturday, the first strikes since a peace deal was announced in 2013, and again bombed Islamic State positions in Syria.
The strikes in Iraq targeted the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, whose affiliates have been effective in battling the Islamic State group. The strikes further complicate the US-led war against the extremists, which has relied on Kurdish ground forces making gains in Iraq and Syria. A spokesman in Iraq for the PKK, which has been fighting Turkey for autonomy since 1984 and is considered a terrorist organization by Ankara and its allies, said the strikes likely spelled the end of the peace process. "Turkey has basically ended the cease-fire," Zagros Hiwa told The Associated Press. He said the first wave of strikes launched overnight didn't appear to cause casualties.
Turkey's pro-Kurdish party, the People's Democratic Party, said the strikes amounted to an end of the twoyear- old truce. It called on the government to end the bombing campaign and resume a dialogue with the Kurds. Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu announced later on Saturday that he had ordered "a third wave" of raids against the IS in Syria and a "second wave" of strikes against the PKK in northern Iraq, but didn't provide details on areas hit. He said the operations would continue.
"Turkey's operations will, if needed, continue until the terror organizations' command centers, all locations where they plan (attacks) against Turkey and all depots used to store arms to be used against Turkey are destroyed," Davutoglu said, as he headed for a meeting with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the country's military chief. He accused the PKK of not keeping a pledge to withdraw armed fighters from Turkish territory and to disarm. The government statement earlier said the first strikes targeted seven areas including the Qandil mountains, where the PKK's command is based. The statement did not detail Islamic State targets but described the airstrikes in both Syria and Iraq as being "effective." Hiwa said the jets struck villages on Qandil although the PKK base was not hit.
Turkey's military also shelled Islamic State and PKK positions in Syria from across the Turkish border, the government said. It vowed to press ahead with operations against the PKK and IS, saying it was "determined to take all steps to ensure peace and security for our people." Turkish police meanwhile proceeded with a major operation against the Islamic State, the PKK and the far-left DHKP-C for a second day. Close to 600 people were detained in raids in 22 provinces, Davutoglu said. Tensions flared with Kurds after an Islamic State suicide bombing in the southeastern Turkish city of Suruc on Monday killed 32 people. Kurdish groups held the Turkish government responsible, saying it had not been aggressive in battling the Islamic State group.
On Wednesday, the PKK claimed responsibility for killing two Turkish police officers near the Kurdish majority city of Sanliurfa, near the Syrian border. In other attacks, seven police officers were wounded after suspected PKK militants hurled a small bomb at a police station in Bismil, near the mainly Kurdish city of Diyarbakir, the Dogan news agency reported Friday. Another small bomb was thrown at officers in a police vehicle in Semdinli, near the border with Iraq, the agency said. On Friday, Turkey announced that it was allowing its air bases to be used by the US-led coalition forces for operations against Islamic State extremists.
Turkey had been reluctant to join USled coalition airstrikes against the Islamic State group. It had long insisted that coalition operations should also target Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime, which Ankara blames for all ills in Syria,and it also pressed for the establishment of a no-fly zone inside Syria, along the Turkish border. Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu on Saturday did not confirm Turkish news reports that claimed that the United States and Turkey had agreed to establish a secure area in Syria, saying safe zones would be automatically formed in Iraq and Syria once the IS threat disappears. "At the end of this efficient fight against IS, areas that have been cleared of IS (militants) will become safe zones," Cavusoglu said. On Friday, three F-16 jets struck Islamic State targets that included two command centers and a gathering point near the Turkish border in Syria. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said nine Islamic State militants were killed in the raids. The extremists have yet to comment on the strikes. The Syrian government has so far refrained from commenting on Turkish strikes inside Syrian territory, but Syria's main political opposition group, which is backed by Ankara, welcomed Turkey's move.
Explosive
Islamic State militants on Saturday detonated explosive laden trucks in two villages near the Kurdish-controlled Syrian border town of Tel Abyad, with reports of casualties, a monitor that tracks the war said. The UK-based Observatory for Human Rights said the attacks targeted Kurdish YPG checkpoints in two mainly Arab inhabited villages on the south eastern edge of the town. Tel Abyad, in a strategic location on the border with Turkey, was taken last month by Kurdish forces from ultra-hardline jihadists in an advance backed by US led air strikes.
Meanwhile, Turkish police fired water cannon and teargas to disperse about 1,000 demonstrators who had gathered in the capital Ankara to protest against military strikes in Syria and northern Iraq, a Reuters cameraman at the scene said. Authorities had earlier said they would not allow a planned peace march to be held in Istanbul on Sunday, citing concerns about security and traffic. The leadership of Iraqi Kurdistan on Saturday condemned Turkish air strikes against positions of PKK Kurdish rebels in its autonomous region in the north of Iraq. Kurdish regional President Massud Barzani spoke to Turkish Prime Minister Ahmed Davutoglu on the telephone and "expressed his displeasure with the dangerous level the situation has reached," a statement said.
"He requested that the issue not be escalated to that level because peace is the only way to solve problems and years of negotiations are better than one hour of war," Barzani said in a statement. On Friday, the same day Turkey bombed the Islamic State group in Syria for the first time, Turkish jets also struck positions held by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in Iraq. A PKK spokesman in Iraq, Bakhtiar Dogan, told AFP one fighter was killed and three wounded in the strikes, which he said started late Friday and lasted through much of Saturday.
A medical source north of the Iraqi Kurdish city of Dohuk said two civilians, including a 12-year-old boy, were also wounded. "We are still committed to the directives of our leader (Abdullah) Ocalan " but it seems Erdogan wants to drag us back into war," Dogan said. "When things reach this level and when all of our areas are bombed, I think by then the ceasefire has no meaning anymore," he said. Davutoglu said Barzani had expressed his "solidarity" with the operation when he spoke to him. The Turkish group has long had camps in the mountains of Iraq's Kurdish region, near the border with Turkey. The PKK and Iraq's Kurdish leadership have often been at odds in the past but both are involved in the fight against the Islamic State group. "Mr Barzani is ready to do anything within his means to appease this tension and go back to a situation of peace," the statement from his office said. For its part, the Kurdistan region's parliament "strongly condemned" the Turkish air force's cross-border operation.
"We demand an immediate end to it. This kind of development creates anger among Kurdistan's people," a statement said. "We had thought the government of Turkey would not go back to resorting to strikes and military offensives because the successive Turkish governments' attempts to bring a military solution to the Kurdish issue have yielded nothing but bloodshed, destruction and poverty," it said. "The Kurdistan parliament urges the government of Turkey to take steps towards peace and exert maximum efforts to continue down a peaceful path without turning back," it said. "At the same time, we urge the PKK to review its position and focus on continuing the peace process because living in peace is the best path to prosperity."
The United States and its allies targeted Islamic State militants with 22 air strikes in Iraq on Friday and nine in Syria, the Command Joint Task Force said on Saturday. Seven of the attacks were near the Iraqi city of Fallujah and hit bridges, a bombmaking facility and other targets. The strikes in Iraq were near the cities of Al Huwayjah, Bayji, Habbaniyah, Makmur, Mosul, Ramadi, Sinjar and Tel Afar and hit tactical units, weapons and other assets. In Syria, fighting positions, tactical units and equipment were targeted in strikes near Al Hasakah, Ar Raqqah, Dayr Az and Kobani, a statement said. Kurdish militia have expanded their control over portions of a major Syrian city in their fightback against the Islamic State group, to the detriment of government forces there, a monitor said Saturday.
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