Turkey escalates airstrikes on Kurdish targets in northern Iraq

The Iraqi government condemned the airstrikes, calling them "a dangerous escalation and an assault on Iraqi sovereignty.”

Turkish officials said the airstrikes were carried out in response to a string of terrorist attacks in Turkey by militants of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K., a separatist group that waged a 30-year insurgency against Turkish rule. The office of Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said in a written statement that the strikes on Wednesday were against shelters, depots and caves used as hide-outs by the group. No information was released concerning casualties.

The P.K.K. reached a cease-fire agreement with the Turkish government two years ago, but that tenuous peace has fallen apart in recent weeks. The government says that the group has refused to disarm and that it has carried out a series of attacks since the parliamentary elections on June 7, when Kurdish candidates made a strong showing.

On Tuesday, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the president of Turkey, said it was impossible to continue a peace process with the militants while they threatened national unity and brotherhood. He called on Parliament to deny immunity from prosecution to any lawmakers linked to terrorist groups, a remark seen as a threat to Kurdish lawmakers.

Turkey agreed last week to take a more active role in the American-led coalition’s fight against the Islamic State, the Sunni Arab militant group that has seized large areas of Syria and Iraq. But Turkey’s air campaign since then has mainly been directed at the P.K.K., and the bombing raids it began on Friday effectively ended the cease-fire.

The possibility of retaliatory attacks by the P.K.K. prompted a warning from the German Foreign Ministry on Wednesday, saying that the underground rail network and bus stops in Istanbul could be targets, Reuters reported.

Mr. Davutoglu said Turkey would keep bombing the Kurdish militants as long as the militants threatened violence. "If we have one martyr, we will continue all operations on that organization that ordered the attack,” Mr. Davutoglu told members of his governing party in a speech on Wednesday.

 

(NYT)