ISTANBUL/SURUC, Turkey: War against Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq threatened on Tuesday to unravel the delicate peace in neighboring Turkey after the Turkish air force bombed Kurdish fighters furious over Ankara’s refusal to help protect their kin in Syria.
Turkey’s banned PKK Kurdish militant group accused Ankara of violating a two-year-old cease-fire with the airstrikes, on the eve of a deadline set by the group’s jailed leader to salvage a peace process aimed at halting a three-decades-long insurgency.
“For the first time in nearly two years, an air operation was carried out against our forces by the occupying Turkish Republic army,” the PKK said. “These attacks against two guerrilla bases at Daglica violated the cease-fire,” the PKK said, referring to an area near the border with Iraq.
Meanwhile, Islamic State fighters have been fighting their way into the mainly Kurdish Syrian border town of Kobani, where the United Nations says thousands could be massacred within full view of Turkish tanks that have done nothing to intervene.
A pro-Kurdish party leader read out a statement from Jailed PKK cofounder Abdullah Ocalan in Parliament on Tuesday in which the PKK leader said Kurdish parties should work with the government to end street violence.
“Otherwise we will open the way to provocations that could bring about a massacre,” Ocalan said in the statement, which the party said he wrote last week.
Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said the Turkish military had retaliated against a PKK attack in the border area.
“Yesterday there was very serious harassing fire around the Daglica military outpost. Naturally it is impossible for us to tolerate this. Hence the Turkish armed forces took the necessary measures,” he told a news conference, without referring specifically to air strikes.
Hurriyet newspaper said the air strikes caused “major damage” to the PKK. “F-16 and F-4 warplanes which took off from (bases in the southeastern provinces of) Diyarbakir and Malatya rained down bombs on PKK targets after they attacked a military outpost in the Daglica region,” Hurriyet said.
The general staff said in a statement it had “opened fired immediately in retaliation in the strongest terms” after PKK attacks in the area, but did not mention air strikes.
In the Turkish town of Suruc, 10 km from the Syrian frontier, a funeral for four female YPG fighters was being held. Hundreds at the cemetery chanted “Murderer Erdogan” in Turkish and also “long live YPG” in Kurdish.