Turkey Intensifies Military Campaign Against Rebels in Kurdish Heartland Ankara’s campaign against the PKK is the latest sign that a new cease-fire is unlikely soon By Ayla Albayrak
http://www.wsj.com/articles/turkey-launches-military-operation-against-militants-in-kurdish-heartland-1450294160
ISTANBUL—Thousands of Turkish security forces are converging on the country’s Kurdish heartland for what the government is calling a “decisive” military campaign against militants fighting for autonomy.
Nearly 200,000 people have fled their homes and hundreds have been killed in parts of southeastern Turkey, the epicenter of clashes since a two-year cease-fire between the government and Kurdish militants collapsed five months ago, according to humanitarian groups.
Turkish security forces in tanks and armored personnel carriers are now seeking to tighten their hold on strongholds of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party—the militant group better known as the PKK—in residential neighborhoods of seven Kurdish-majority cities, officials said.
In describing the campaign on Wednesday, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu vowed to transform what he called the Kurdish “ring of fire into places of peace, stability and freedom.” The PKK has been classified as a terrorist organization by the U.S., the European Union and Turkey.
“Wherever there are sources of terrorism, we will definitely continue our fight until they are completely wiped out,” Mr. Davutoglu said in a speech in the Turkish capital of Ankara.
The military operation—which is targeting mostly urban militants—is the latest sign that a cease-fire and return to peace talks is unlikely to happen soon. More than 560 people, at least 150 of them civilians, have been killed in the clashes, according to the International Crisis Group, an international nonprofit group that focuses on global conflict.
“Turkey faces a critical choice: “To advance its military strategy against the PKK in a fight that is bound to be protracted and inconclusive, or to resume peace talks,” the nonprofit group said in a report to be released Thursday.
In advance of the military campaign, thousands of special police forces have been brought in by bus and plane, and hospitals in some cities have been put on nonstop weeklong shifts. Meanwhile, thousands of teachers have been told to leave their schools across the region.
On Wednesday, the Turkish military said eight Kurdish militants had been killed in fighting in the southeast as security forces enforced curfews in several cities across the region, including parts of Diyarbakir, the de facto Kurdish capital.
“I was born and raised in Diyarbakir and I’ve never seen anything like this,” said one father whose two children haven’t left their home in the city’s historic Sur neighborhood, the site of some of the most intense clashes, since their school was closed in early December because of the extended curfew. “I can’t say who is more to blame for this. Both sides are wrong. It is the people who get crushed here.”
Many residents in the region said the intensifying conflict has been worse than in the 1990s, when the PKK carried out deadly strikes that traumatized the nation. More than 40,000 people have died in the three-decade-old conflict, which re-erupted five months ago when the cease-fire came to an end and stagnant peace talks collapsed.
Now, a new generation of Kurdish militants in Turkish cities and towns are using makeshift bombs with deadly effect. Nearly 200 members of the Turkish security forces have been killed since July, according to the International Crisis Group and Turkish officials, nearly 90 of them from homemade bombs.
The deepening conflict is putting strains on Turkey’s security apparatus as Turkey steps up its involvement in the fight against Islamic State and the government has had to recruited thousands of new special police forces to fight the PKK in the cities.
The U.S. is pressing the government in Ankara to send thousands of troops to the Turkish-Syrian border to choke off a vital supply line to Islamic State. Meanwhile, Turkey has joined a new Saudi-led coalition of 34 mainly Muslim nations that has vowed to fight Islamic State across the Middle East and North Africa.
The Turkish operations against the Kurdish militants are drawing increasing criticism from human-rights groups and opposition lawmakers who have urged the ruling party to return to the negotiating table.
“These disproportionate operations are deepening the problem,” said Raci Bilici, chairman of local branch of the Turkish Human Rights Association. “They make it harder to reach a solution in the future.”
—Dion Nissenbaum contributed to this article.
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