ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Turkey is starting a new offensive with “new strategies” against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), including raids on the group in northern Iraq and Turkey’s own Kurdish southeast, Turkish media reported.
Ground operations will begin soon in Turkey’s Kurdish areas of Oramar, Doski, Shamzinan, Amad heights, Dersim and Shirnakh, the reports said.
The Turkish air force will also reportedly resume air raids in the Qandil, Avashin and Zap mountains in the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq, which the PKK has used as a safe haven for its guerrillas over the last 30 years.
The Turkish army has urged the country’s intelligence agencies and police to arrest those behind PKK financing in the Kurdish areas.
At a security meeting this month, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu had warned that weeks-long assaults on the PKK would continue during the winter.
The Turkish government reignited a war with the PKK after the rebels claimed responsibility for the deaths of two police officers in late July. The fighting has ended a 2013 ceasefire that was meant to resolve a three-decade conflict in which some 40,000 people have been killed.
Turkish forces have been fighting the PKK since the two-and-a-half year cease-fire broke down in late July following a bombing in Suruc.
Early this month, the PKK’s umbrella organization declared a resumption of the deadly conflict with the Turkish government, formally ending a unilateral truce.
"We are going to resume our military activities in northern Kurdistan and Turkey," said the leadership of the Group of Communities in Kurdistan (KCK), which was founded by the PKK to put into practice jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan’s ideas.
The statement accused Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) of unwillingness to solve the Kurdish question in Turkey. It said the AKP was demonstrating "the will to fight.”
It added: “We are always ready for a bilateral ceasefire; when we declared a unilateral truce the Turkish army kept attacking us in northern Kurdistan," in Turkey.
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