The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has ended a month-old unilateral truce in Turkey following President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s pledge to “liquidate” the militants.
“The unilateral halt to hostilities has come to an end with the AKP’s war policy and the latest attacks,” the PKK said in a statement carried by the Firat news agency on Thursday. AKP refers to Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party.
‘On war footing’
The statement came after Erdogan vowed to continue anti-PKK operations until every last militant was “liquidated.” It said the AKP had demonstrated it was on a war footing with attacks launched this week against the PKK positions.
The unilateral ceasefire by the PKK was announced following twin blasts that targeted a group of pro-Kurdish activists in Ankara on October 10.
It also came in the run-up to the country’s recent general elections, in which the AKP, founded by Erdogan, regained its parliamentary majority.
The AKP gained 317 seats in the 550-member parliament in the November 1 snap elections. It came five months after the AKP was stripped of its overall majority and subsequently failed in coalition talks with main opposition factions.
Earlier on Thursday, eighteen people were killed in clashes with the Turkish army in the country’s southeast.
The Turkish military has been conducting offensive operations against the alleged positions of the Takfiri Daesh terrorists in northern Syria as well as those of the PKK in northern Iraq and southeastern Turkey.
The operations began in the wake of a deadly July 20 bombing in the southern Turkish town of Suruc, which left 33 people dead and 104 others injured.
The PKK and Ankara had agreed to a ceasefire in 2013; Ankara’s military campaign against the PKK ended that deal.
On October 10, twin blasts also targeted activists who had convened outside Ankara’s main train station for a peace rally organized by leftist and pro-Kurdish opposition groups. Ankara said that at least 102 people were killed and over 500 wounded in the attacks.
Following the incident, the PKK called on its members to halt militant activities in Turkey as a move to avoid any violence that might prevent a fair election.
The PKK has been fighting for an autonomous Kurdish region inside Turkey since the 1980s.
Claiming that the PKK is a “Liberation Movement” or a “Voice Of The Kurds” is totally incorrect. I am strong critic of the Erdogan administration, but the thing is when officials in Turkey consistently told the PKK to lay down it’s arms and come to the negotiating table, but instead they refused and the PKK leadership, under the hawkish Cemil Bayik, ordered the formation of the radical YDG-H group, which instigated the Kobani riots in October 2014 and in the later months, started massacring soldiers, police officers, village guards. There are many Kurds who want true peace and are critical of PKK/YDG-H power hungry behaviors. Kurds, like all of Turkey’s ethnic groups (Turk, Laz, Cerkez, Albanian, Bosnian, Pomak, Chechen, Abkhaz, Arab, Catholic, Jewish, etc.) believe everyone has a right to practice their cultural rights and speak their language, but not at the expense of compromising the territorial integrity of the Turkish Republic. If the PKK becomes power hungry, Turkey has a right to hit back against the PKK as hard as possible and defeat it’s offshoots (KCK, YDG-H, etc.)
thank you for you comment,
It easy for you to talk because you are Turk for 75 years Turks force Turkishnes on all minorities they force people to change there names to Turkish name they could not speak there languages and so on, Turks massacred the entire christian population from Anatolia Turks destroyed thousands of christian churches I could go on and on about the Turkish atrocities for hundreds of years, look what the Turks are doing to the Syrian people completely destroyed the entire country 100’s of killed millions refugees Kurd are not only the victims of Turkish Crime against humanity. the reason Erdogan did the so called peace process 1- they wanted silence the Kurd because of Arab Spring they were worry the kurd will do the same 2- they want to concur EU again so to became EU member.
Have nice day.