Turkey Pushes Forward with Strikes against ISIL, PKK in Drive for ‘Safe Zone’

Turkey has dramatically cranked up its role in the US-led coalition against ISIL since a suspected ISIL suicide bomber killed 32 people earlier this week in a town close to the Syrian border, while pledging to also target Kurdish militants.

This has raised concern about the future of the shaky Kurdish peace process, according to a report by Reuters. 

Critics including opposition politicians accuse President Tayyip Erdogan of trying to use the campaign against ISIL as an excuse to crack down on Kurds.

The heightened security operations will go on for as long as Turkey feels threatened, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told a news conference.

Turkish ground forces were pounding targets belonging to both groups with artillery, he added.

“No one should doubt our determination,” he added.

“We will not allow Turkey to be turned into a lawless country.”

“These operations are not ‘one-point operations’ and will continue as long as there is a threat against Turkey,” he said.

Turkey was long a reluctant member of the coalition against ISIL, a stance that annoyed Nato ally Washington with the air strikes doing little so far to “degrade and destroy” ISIL capabilities, as President Barack Obama described their goal.

Ankara has now, for the first time, taken a front-line role in the battle, apparently spurred to action by the suicide bombing in the border town of Suruc.

Many of those killed in the attack were Kurds and it kicked off waves of violence in the largely Kurdish southeast by militants who say Erdogan and his AK Party have covertly supported ISIL against Syrian Kurds.

Ankara denies the accusation.

Turkey staged its first-ever air strike on ISIL in Syria early on Friday, while police rounded up hundreds of suspected hardliner and Kurdish militants in cities and towns across the country.

As of Saturday, nearly 600 people had been detained.

Once swathes of northern Syria are cleared of ISIL militants, “safe zones will be formed naturally,” Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told a news conference.

“We have always defended safe zones and no-fly zones in Syria. People who have been displaced can be placed in those safe zones,” he said.

Turkey has long sought a “no-fly zone” or “safe zone” in northern Syria but met resistance from Washington, which says direct military pressure on ISIL, not a “safe zone,” is the best way to end the region’s fighting and refugee crisis. Ankara struck a deal with Washington this week allowing coalition forces to use Turkish bases for bombing raids against ISIL, greatly shortening distances to targets and potentially making the aerial campaign more effective.

It was not immediately known whether the agreement would entail the creation of a safe or buffer zone.

The overnight air strikes hit ISIL positions in Syria and PKK locations in northern Iraq, including warehouses and living quarters, Davutoglu’s office said in a statement.

Simultaneously, Turkish land forces fired on ISIL and the PKK, it said.

The attacks on the outlawed PKK, which has waged a three-decade insurgency against Turkey, could kill off stumbling peace talks between the group and Ankara, which were started in 2012 but have been stalled lately.

“The truce has no meaning anymore after these intense air strikes by the occupant Turkish army,” the PKK said in a statement on its website.

Erdogan took a big political risk in starting peace talks in 2012 with the Kurds, who represent nearly 20 per cent of Turkey’s population.

They now accuse him of backtracking on promises. Separately, Istanbul authorities said they would not let organizers go ahead with a peace march planned for Sunday, citing concerns about security and “dense traffic”.

The march had been organized with the support of some opposition politicians. With tensions running high across the country, Turkish police late Friday used tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse a protest in the Istanbul district of Kadikoy by hundreds of people to denounce ISIL violence.

Protesters in the anti-establishment district of Gazi also defiantly carried the coffin of Gunay Ozarslan, a female activist killed in clashes with police on Friday during a raid on leftist militants, a photographer said.