[Peace-discuss] Turkey's REAL objective

[David Johnson via Peace-discuss]

  Turkey bombs Kurdish PKK rebel positions, Kobani inaction threatens
  ceasefire

Published time: October 14, 2014 13:17
Get short URL <http://rt.com/news/195824-turkey-bomb-kurdish-pkk/>
A Lockheed Martin F-16 of the Turkish Air Force.(Reuters / Tobias Schwarz)

A Lockheed Martin F-16 of the Turkish Air Force.(Reuters / Tobias Schwarz)


Turkish warplanes have bombed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) targets 
near the country's border with Iraq. The strikes highlight rising 
tensions in Turkey over Ankara's perceived unwillingness to aid besieged 
Kurdish fighters in the Syrian town of Kobani.

The Turkish General Staff dispatched F-16 and F-4 jets to the 
southeastern village of Daglica in Hakkari province on Monday, the 
Turkish daily Hurriyet reports.

The daily says the airstrikes caused /"heavy damage"/ to the PKK.

The PKK's military wing, however, said in a statement on its website 
that its forces had not suffered casualties during the strikes, Reuters 
reports.

Turkey says the bombings came in response to three days of attacks on 
the Dagl?ca military guard post with rocket-propelled grenades and heavy 
machine guns. PKK insurgents for their part blamed the Turkish military 
of violating the ceasefire.

Monday's strikes were the first to be conducted since the Kurdish rebel 
group declared a ceasefire 
<http://rt.com/news/pkk-kurds--turkey-ceasefire-722/> with Turkey in 
March 2013.

The incident underlines simmering anger among Kurds in southeastern 
Turkey over Ankara's failure to intervene against so-called Islamic 
State (IS) militants, who launched a massive offensive on the 
predominately Kurdish town of Kobani -- not far from Syria's border with 
Turkey -- on September 16.

At least 35 people were killed throughout Turkey's Kurdish majority 
south-eastern provinces last week after protests against Ankara's 
inaction descended into violent street clashes.

Kurdish protesters set fire to a barricade set up to block the street as 
they clash with riot police in Diyarbakir October 7, 2014.(Reuters / 
Stringer)

Kurdish protesters set fire to a barricade set up to block the street as 
they clash with riot police in Diyarbakir October 7, 2014.(Reuters / 
Stringer)

Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed leader of PKK, has threatened to call off 
peace talks to end nearly three decades of insurgency if Ankara does not 
act by Wednesday.

Meanwhile, a /"symbolic"/ amount of military supplies sent from Iraqi 
Kurdistan to Syrian Kurds is stuck in Syria's northeast after Turkey 
refused to open an aid corridor, German daily Deutsche Welle cites 
Syrian Kurdish official Alan Othman as saying on Tuesday.

/"It is a symbolic shipment that has remained in the Jazeera canton,"/ 
Othman said, using the Kurdish name for northeastern Syria.

On Monday, Turkish officials denied a previous announcement by the Obama 
administration that Ankara had authorized US fighter jets to use the 
Incirlik Airbase as a launching point to conduct bombing campaigns 
against IS (Islamic State) militants.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that any military operations 
conducted from its territory should be done with an aim of removing 
Syrian president Bashar Assad from power.

Earlier this month, Erdogan said that IS and the PKK are equally worthy 
of contempt in the eyes of Turkey.

/"It is wrong to consider them [IS and PKK] in different ways,"/ Erdogan 
said. /"We need to handle them all together on a common ground."/

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