The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has deployed armed forces back to Turkey, said Cemil Bayık, a senior leader of the organization, also retreting his pessimism about the recent talks between the Turkish government and the PKK.
The PKK will restart fights in case killings of Kurds continue in Kobane, the Syrian border town where the clashes between the armed Kurdish forces and Islamist State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) have contiued since more than three weeks.
News agencies report that ISIL keeps advancing in and outside the town, from where more than 150,000 people fled to Turkey.
“If things continue this way, the guerrilas will fight to defend our people. The core task of the guerillas is to defend the people,” Bayık reportedly said.
A group of PKK launched the symbolic withdrawal in May 2013, as part of the talks to resolve the decades-long Kurdish issue.
Bayık did not mention how many militants were sent back to the Turkish soil.
“As the government continues to deploy soldiers to the southeast and east, we decided to take action,” saying that a military action motion approved at the Turkish Parliament on earlier this week was “a declaration of war” against them.
A total of 37 people were killed this week’s unrest that broke at demostrations in the country, densely at provinces with high Kurdish population.
The PKK calls on government to do more for the Kurds trapped in Kobane. Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Yalçın Akdoğan said Oct. 10 that Turkish soldiers were not mercenaries.