TURKEY’S PRIME minister issued a message of defiance and national unity yesterday after 12 soldiers were killed at the weekend in the worst attacks this year by Kurdish rebels.
Fighters from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) attacked an army post in Hakkari province, on Turkey’s border with Iraq, early on Saturday, killing nine soldiers, said a statement by the Turkish general staff.
Two others were killed by a landmine, and one on Saturday night in a further attack on an army post in the eastern province of Elazig.
“They will not win. They will gain nothing,” declared Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister, in the south-eastern city of Van, speaking next to the soldiers’ coffins at a ceremony attended by ministers and senior commanders.
“These kinds of bloody attacks will not change the integrity of our country; of our nation . . . The blood of martyrs is in every piece of this territory,” he said.
Mr Erdogan faced criticism at the weekend for his government’s failure to prevent the recent escalation in violence. He has repaired relations with the Kurdish administration in northern Iraq, and launched an initiative last year to broaden rights for Turkey’s sizeable Kurdish minority in an effort to end the conflict.
However, the initiative was badly received by many Turks in the west of the country, and petered out after the constitutional court banned the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society party for its links to the PKK, opening the way for a spate of arrests and prosecutions of Kurdish politicians.
A PKK spokesman said this month that the group – designated a terrorist group by the US and European Union – had scrapped a year-long ceasefire in retaliation. The PKK’s usual spring offensive is proving one of the deadliest for years: including this weekend’s casualties, more than 50 soldiers and 140 rebels have died in the past four months.
Mr Erdogan says the latest wave of attacks is an attempt to sabotage his ruling AK party’s efforts to end the 26-year conflict.
Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of the opposition People’s Republican party (CHP), said on Saturday that the political will to combat terrorism had proved weak. Devlet Bahceli, leader of the nationalist MHP, called for early elections and the return of emergency rule in the south-east.
Some commentators also link the escalation in violence to Turkey’s volatile foreign relations. The leftwing Cumhuriyet newspaper questioned why intelligence-sharing with the US had not alerted the military to the latest attacks.
The general staff said it had sent reinforcements after Saturday morning’s attack and had deployed helicopters and artillery – killing 12 PKK fighters. The air force had also bombed targets in the mountains of northern Iraq, where the PKK shelter. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010