Turkey strikes at Kurds in Iraq

Air raids first since ’13 truce

Protesters in Istanbul dodge tear gas fired Saturday by police during a demonstration over Monday’s Islamic State suicide bombing in Suruc in southeastern Turkey that killed 32 people, mostly Kurds.
Protesters in Istanbul dodge tear gas fired Saturday by police during a demonstration over Monday’s Islamic State suicide bombing in Suruc in southeastern Turkey that killed 32 people, mostly Kurds.

ANKARA, Turkey -- 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.

photo

AP

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Saturday in Ankara that “safe zones” would automatically be formed in Iraq and Syria in areas cleared of Islamic State militants in the “efficient fight” by U.S. and Turkish forces.

The strikes in Iraq targeted the Kurdistan Workers' Party, whose affiliates have been effective in battling the Islamic State extremist group. The strikes further complicate the U.S.-led campaign against the extremists, which has relied on Kurdish ground forces making gains in Iraq and Syria.

A spokesman in Iraq for the Kurdistan Workers' Party, 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 said. 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 2-year-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 Saturday that he had ordered "a third wave" of raids against the Islamic State in Syria and a "second wave" of strikes against the Kurdistan Workers' Party 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 Kurdistan Workers' Party of not keeping a pledge to withdraw armed fighters from Turkish territory and to disarm.

The Turkish jets hit shelters and storage facilities belonging to the Kurdistan Workers' Party in seven areas in northern Iraq, including Mount Quandil, home to the group's headquarters, authorities said. It was Turkey's first aerial raid in northern Iraq against the Kurdistan Workers' Party since Turkey began peace talks with the Kurds in 2012 after a three-decade conflict that claimed at least 40,000 lives.

The group declared a cease-fire in 2013.

The statement did not detail Islamic State targets but described the airstrikes in Syria and Iraq as being "effective." The jets entered Syrian airspace to do so, Davutoglu's office said, unlike during the previous strikes, which the government said were carried out from the Turkish side of the border.

Hiwa said the jets struck villages on Quandil, although the Kurdistan Workers' Party base was not hit.

Turkey's military also shelled Islamic State and Kurdistan Workers' Party positions in Syria from across the Turkish border, the government said. It vowed to press ahead with operations, saying it was "determined to take all steps to ensure peace and security for our people."

suspected militants held

Turkish police, meanwhile, proceeded with a major operation against the Islamic State, the Kurdistan Workers' Party and the far-left Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front for a second day. Security personnel detained 288 suspects across Turkey on Friday night, raising the total held to 590, Davutoglu said Saturday.

The U.S. has given air support to the Syrian Kurds, who have close ties with the autonomy-seeking Kurdistan Workers' Party, as they battle jihadists.

Turkey considers both sides to be terrorists.

In his comments about the police raids, Erdogan focused on the "separatist" threat of the Kurdistan Workers' Party. The government will go after all "terrorist groups no matter what their names are," he said.

That stance has angered Turkey's Kurdish minority, as much as 20 percent of the population.

There are "no boundaries to the climate of violence created by Erdogan," the People's Democratic Party said. The group previously said some of its leaders were arrested in the raids.

Erdogan and the ruling Justice and Development Party broke a long-standing taboo in Turkish politics by initiating a dialogue with the Kurdistan Workers' Party.

But the efforts, now in their third year, have broken down as the Turkish government has failed to meet Kurdish demands for greater rights and more autonomy.

The last time Turkey carried out strikes against Kurdistan Workers' Party camps in northern Iraq was in 2011, when it launched a six-day offensive, striking 132 targets.

Meanwhile, the governor of Istanbul banned a "peace march" that was to be held today, citing the need to protect public order. Online access to a number of Kurdish news websites was banned, Hurriyet newspaper reported.

suicide bombing

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.

Most of the victims of the attack were young Kurdish activists who had gathered at the center to discuss the rebuilding of Kobani, a war-torn border town in Syria that has come under numerous attacks from the Islamic State over the past year.

On Wednesday, the group 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 Kurdistan Workers' Party 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.

The White House said Saturday that Turkey has the right to defend itself against terrorist attacks by Kurdish rebels.

White House spokesman Alistair Baskey condemned recent attacks by the Kurdistan Workers' Party, which the U.S. has designated a terrorist group.

Baskey said the group should renounce terrorism and resume talks with Turkey's government. But he also said both sides should avoid violence and pursue de-escalation.

On Friday, Turkey announced that it was allowing its air bases to be used by the U.S.-led coalition forces for operations against Islamic State extremists.

Turkey had been reluctant to join U.S.-led coalition airstrikes against the Islamic State. It had long insisted that coalition operations also should target Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime, 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 Islamic State threat disappears.

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.

In France on Saturday, more than 1,000 Kurds and leftist Turks marched in Paris to protest airstrikes by Turkey on the Kurdish militant camps.

The march was originally called to protest Monday's Islamic State suicide attack in Suruc. But Turkey's airstrikes in Iraq changed the agenda of the protest march from the Gare de l'Est train station to the Place de la Republique.

Information for this article was contributed by Suzan Fraser, Bram Janssen, Vivian Salama, Zeina Karam, Gregory Katz, Josh Lederman and staff members of The Associated Press; by Benjamin Harvey, Taylan Bilgic, Onur Ant, Constantine Courcoulas, Selcan Hacaoglu and Ali Berat Meric of Bloomberg News; and by Ceylan Yeginsu, Eric Schmitt and Kamil Kakol of The New York Times.

A Section on 07/26/2015

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