Turkish soldiers stop vehicles at a checkpoint in Diyarbakir yesterday following the attack in the Lice district.
Reuters/DPA/AFP
Ankara
Kurdish militants killed two Turkish soldiers in a roadside bombing yesterday, the military said, apparently retaliating for Ankara’s crackdown on the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) launched in tandem with strikes on Islamic State (IS) insurgents in Syria.
Long a reluctant member of the US-led coalition against Islamic State, Turkey made a dramatic turnaround this week by granting the alliance access to its air bases and launching air raids against both the jihadist movement and the PKK.
But the relapse into serious conflict between Turkey and the PKK has raised doubts about the future of Nato member Turkey’s peace process with Kurdish foes that started in 2012, after 28 years of bloodshed, but has recently stalled.
A car bomb and roadside explosives hit a passing military vehicle on a highway near Diyarbakir in the mainly Kurdish southeast of Turkey overnight, an army said.
The attack in the Lice district of Diyarbakir province took place the same day that Turkey carried out its first airstrikes in three years against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
Kurdish militants then opened fire on the vehicle with rifle fire, the army said. Four other soldiers were wounded.
The army blamed the “Separatist Terror Organisation” for the attack, using its customary phrase for the PKK, which it never refers to by name.
It said the victims had been lured to the site of the attack after the PKK set three vehicles on fire on the road linking the cities of Diyarbakir and Bingol.
The PKK’s military wing, the People’s Defence Forces (HPG), claimed the attack in a statement on its website but gave much higher toll of eight soldiers killed.
At least six people had been detained in connection with the attack, Dogan news agency reported.
The PKK, which Ankara and Washington deem a terrorist group, has also targeted police officers in the south-east and elsewhere, accusing the Islamist-rooted central government of covertly helping Islamic State to the detriment of Syrian Kurds.
The outlawed PKK has waged an insurgency against Ankara for Kurdish autonomy since 1984.
Opposition politicians and critics accuse President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of taking up the campaign against Islamic State as political cover to clamp down on Kurds.
Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who has said that the operations will continue as long as Turkey faces a threat, discussed security with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in a telephone call overnight.
A senior US diplomat condemned recent PKK attacks but said there was no link between Turkey’s new strikes on Kurdish militants and its newfound boldness in tackling Islamic State, which has seized large expanses of neighbouring Syria and Iraq.
“There is no connection between these air strikes against PKK and recent understandings to intensify US-Turkey co-operation against ISIL,” Brett McGurk, the deputy special presidential envoy for the coalition to counter Islamic State, said on Twitter, using one of Islamic State’s acronyms.
White House spokesman Ben Rhodes, on an official visit to Kenya with President Barack Obama, told a news conference in Nairobi: “The US of course recognises the PKK specifically as a terrorist organisation. And so, again, Turkey has a right to take action related to terrorist targets. And we certainly appreciate their interest in accelerating efforts against ISIL.”
Turkey said on Saturday that its decision to enter the battle against Islamic State, soon after an IS suicide bomber killed 32 people, mainly Kurds, in the Turkish town of Suruc, would help create “a safe zone” across the nearby border in northern Syria.
Members of the Turkish opposition say they are concerned Erdogan aims with new attacks on the PKK to whip up anti-Kurdish sentiment ahead of a possible early election later this year.
The Islamist-based AK Party he founded has until late August to find a junior coalition partner or face an early election.
The AKP lost its single-party majority for the first time in more than a decade in June, in part due to the success of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), which entered parliament for the first time.
“One of the aims of the air, land and media operations carried out right now is to undermine the HDP in early elections,” HDP head Selahattin Demirtas said on Twitter.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has urged the Turkish government should not abandon the peace process with the Kurds despite all the difficulties.
Merkel also assured Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu via phone of Germany’s support in the fight against terrorism, her deputy spokesman Georg Streiter said yesterday.
The two leaders agreed to maintain close co-operation between their foreign, defence and interior ministries not only in the battle against jihadists but also the growing refugee crisis.
Meanwhile, a 23-year-old was fatally shot in Cizre near the eastern border with Syria during clashes between PKK supporters and security forces, broadcaster CNN Turk reported.
In the Istanbul district of Okmeydani, unknown attackers shot at police, injuring two officers and a passer-by, the DHA news agency said.
Assailants also shot at police stations in Diyarbakir and Siirt in the southeast.
No one was hurt in those incidents.
As the unrest escalated, the European Union urged Turkey to keep the peace process with the Kurds alive, calling a political process the only way to reach a stable resolution in the three-decade conflict.
EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini spoke by phone on Saturday with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu and told him “terrorist groups must not spoil the process and the ceasefire must be preserved”, the EU said.
“Any action taken should avoid the risk of endangering the ceasefire and the Kurdish peace process that remains the best opportunity in a generation to solve a conflict that has claimed far too many lives,” the EU statement said.
The PKK on Saturday said that the conditions were no longer in place to observe the ceasefire, following the heaviest Turkish air strikes on its positions in northern Iraq since August 2011.
