ISTANBUL (AP) – Turkey’s unexpected move to launch raids against Kurdish rebels at the same time it is cracking down on the Islamic State group risks ending of a period of relative calm that has been boon for Turkey’s democracy and economy.
The peace process launched in 2012 with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, has been one of the signature achievements of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, ending decades of violence that has left thousands dead. But that came to a sudden end in recent days as the Kurdish rebel group claimed responsibility for the killing of two Turkish policemen, and Turkish jets slammed a Kurdish stronghold in Northern Iraq.
Turkish officials have portrayed the airstrikes in Iraq against the Kurds and Syria against IS as a decisive move to protect Turkish democracy against terrorism and to change an unfavorable dynamic in its backyard. They say that the move against the PKK was a necessary response to recent acts of violence. Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu also accused the Kurdish rebel group, which Turkey and the U.S. consider a terrorist group, of not keeping a pledge to withdraw armed fighters from Turkish territory and to disarm.
But hitting the PKK’s mountainous stronghold in Qandil, Iraq in two bombing runs was an escalation that could make it hard to put the peace process back together again. Already, the PKK has declared the end of a ceasefire.
The developments follow major political gains for Turkish Kurds, whose main political party, the HDP, for the first time cleared a 10 percent threshold for entering parliament in June elections. The election of 80 Kurdish members of parliament from HDP upended Turkish politics by ending the ruling majority of Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, or AKP. Kurdish leaders say Erdogan’s camp secretly wants coalition talks between AKP and other parties to fail so that the longtime ruling party can try again to reach a majority in repeat elections that could come as early as November.