Turkey’s Fight against Kurdish Militants Gets Bloody

New Strike Shows Fray Worsening Between Turks, Kurds

Smoke rises from a bus that was attacked by members of the Kurdistan Workers' Party on Tuesday in Bingol.

By JOE PARKINSON and AYLA ALBAYRAK

At least 10 Turkish soldiers were killed and more than 70 were wounded in a rocket attack by Kurdish militants in Turkey's eastern province of Bingol, government officials said, in the latest of a series of brazen attacks on Turkey's security forces that underline how the region's three-decade-old conflict is deepening.

A Turkish military convoy of some 200 soldiers, riding in three buses and accompanied by armored vehicles, was hit by rockets fired by members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, at around noon local time Tuesday, according to officials in Bingol governorate.

Ten soldiers were killed in the resulting explosion. Scores of wounded were ferried to nearby hospitals for treatment, some in critical condition, the officials said. Turkish television showed the smoldering carcass of a bus that had been mangled and charred by the strike.

“The rocket was launched far from the convoy by the militants. According to our information, this was an attack by the PKK," a governorate spokesman said. Kurdish news sources considered close to the PKK also reported that the group was responsible for the attack.

Turkish forces had already launched a "major operation" in response to the ambush, including deploying attack helicopters, to root out militants in the area, the Bingol governorate spokesman added.

Underlining Ankara's growing concern over the frequency and severity of PKK attacks, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called an extraordinary meeting with Chief of the General Staff Necdet Ozel in Ankara on Tuesday evening.

The past few months have seen some of the heaviest fighting since the PKK—considered a terrorist organization by Turkey, the U.S. and the European Union—took up arms in 1984 with the aim of carving out a Kurdish state. The conflict has cost some 40,000 lives. The PKK subsequently scaled back its demands, saying it is fighting for Kurdish autonomy rather than secession from Turkey.

More than 700 people have been killed since a parliamentary election in June 2011, according to a report from the International Crisis Group this month, making this the deadliest period since the capture of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan in 1999.

Mr. Erdogan appeared to suggest on Monday that the number could be higher, announcing that some 500 PKK militants had been "rendered ineffective"—meaning killed, wounded or captured—in the past month alone.

Intensifying violence across Turkey's predominantly Kurdish southeast could lead to a replay of the 1990s, analysts have cautioned. Then, a primarily military response from Ankara failed to quell the insurgency and aggravated poverty and grievances among Turkey's estimated 12 million to 15 million Kurds.

Turkish ministers have repeatedly linked this year's dramatic upswing in PKK attacks to Turkey's efforts to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, alleging that Damascus is providing arms and logistical support to boost the rebels' capabilities, a charge Syria's government has denied.

In recent weeks, Ankara has reinforced its southern border with Syria's predominantly Kurdish northeast and staged military exercises after Damascus appeared to cede control of swaths of that region to the Democratic Union Party of Syria, which Ankara alleges is closely linked to the PKK.

"It seems clear that the number of casualties has spiked in tandem with Turkey's Syria policy. Up until August [2011], Turkey was with Assad but then they turned against him and violence began rising. There's a direct correlation between Turkey's Syria policy and these attacks," said Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Turkey's political backdrop is also increasingly polarized. Kurdish activists have bitterly protested against the detention of some 8,000 Kurds—including journalists, lawyers and politicians—as part of a case into a shadowy umbrella Kurdish organization.

On Tuesday, Sebahat Tuncel, a deputy from Turkey's Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party, or BDP, was sentenced to eight years in prison for being a member of the PKK, although parliamentary immunity means she won't immediately face jail.

Last month, Turks were outraged when members of the BDP were filmed hugging armed PKK rebels at a remote roadblock in Turkey's mountainous southeast, leading Prime Minister Erdogan to float the prospect of withdrawing lawmakers' immunity.

The atmosphere of deepening political animosity has dovetailed with increasingly brazen attacks from PKK militants in recent weeks.

The group appeared to shift tactics from their hallmark hit-and-run attacks last month, when more than 100 militants poured into the town of Semdinli, close to Turkey's border with Iran, fighting Turkish forces for almost three weeks in an effort to set up a stronghold. They were cleared out by heavy Turkish reinforcements, who killed a "large number" of them, according to local government officials. The group has also set up roadblocks and kidnapped Turkish officials.

On Sunday, eight police officers were killed by a roadside bomb in a different region of Bingol province. On Saturday, suspected PKK fighters killed four Turkish soldiers in an attack on a convoy near Turkey's far eastern border with Iran and Iraq.