New Strike Shows Fray Worsening Between Turks, Kurds
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Smoke rises from a bus that
was attacked by members of the Kurdistan Workers' Party on Tuesday in Bingol.
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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.
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