IZMIR, Turkey – Turkish warplanes have bombed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) targets in southeastern Turkey, the militant group and a local newspaper said on Tuesday, in what appeared to be the first major air offensive against the insurgents in Turkey since the start of a peace process two years ago.
In a statement on its website, the PKK said Turkish war planes had attacked two militant bases in the Daglica area of Hakkari province on Monday and that its fighters had fired back using heavy machine guns. It said none of its fighters were killed in the raids.
The Hurriyet daily reported earlier that F-16 and F-4 fighter jets had struck PKK targets in Daglica, a mountainous region in Turkey's predominantly Kurdish southeast near the border with Iraq, after the militants had launched a series of raids on a Turkish military outpost in the area with heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. It said the air strikes had caused “heavy PKK casualties”, although it gave no source for the report.
The Turkish military, which rarely talks to the media, could not be reached for comment, however, in a statement on its website it said its base in Daglica had come under insurgent fire on Saturday and Monday and that its troops had returned fire. It did not mention any air strikes.
The PKK said the strikes were the first air operation against its fighters in almost two years and that they had violated a ceasefire agreement with the Turkish state. The statement did not mention any attacks against Turkish military bases before the air raids.
The PKK's jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan called a unilateral ceasefire in March 2013 to mark the start of the Kurdish New Year as part of a wider peace process, and Ankara had said it would refrain from carrying out offensive attacks against the militants. Apart from isolated incidents, the ceasefire has largely held and the country has enjoyed relative calm.
The air raids follow a wave of unrest in southeastern Turkey over the past week, sparked by anger among most Turkish Kurds at their government's refusal to intervene in the predominantly Syrian Kurdish town of Kobane near the Turkish border, which has come under siege by Islamic State (ISIS) militants for the past month.
Violent street protests have erupted across the region and more than 30 people have been killed, including two policemen. Gunfights have been reported between Kurds and religious nationalists, as well as Islamist Kurds who vehemently oppose the PKK and its sympathisers.
After reports emerged of the Turkish air strikes, PKK sympathisers gathered outside the British Parliament in London, demanding that the UK government to arm the YPG militia defending Kobane, because the British "have already decided to be part of the coalition fighting in Iraq.”
"Our demand is just for Turkey to open the border with Kobane. We don't trust them to be part of the coalition fighting ISIS," a spokeswoman said.
Turkey's leaders have dismissed their domestic protesters as vandals and provocateurs who were using the events in Kobane as an excuse to foment unrest and derail the peace process. Ankara has said it will come down hard on the protests although it has given little detail of what it intends to do.
The fate of Kobane and the resulting turmoil has laid bare a deep sense of mistrust among many Kurds in Turkey toward their government, whom they accuse of directly supporting the ISIS militants, a charge Ankara strongly denies.
The violence has also given fuel to a threat by Ocalan that the peace process would come to an end if Kobane was allowed to fall. Ocalan has been in talks with the Turkish state since 2012 to end a 30-year insurgency that has killed some 40,000 people, mostly Kurds, and has decimated the southeast of the country.
Additional reporting by Fiona Leney in London
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